Maria Elwan
Eng 440September 10, 2012
Journal Log 3 - Writing in a Culture of Simulation
2. To
what extent are computers able to think…In light of the nature of rhetoric,
what is the human expectation in the interactions in these phenomena?
My reaction to these personalized
computer aids are similar to the reactions of many others, we acknowledge they
are there but our interactions are sometimes efficient, sometimes frustrating
and often entertaining.
Calling a business and going
through the phone tree can be quicker and more to the point than having to deal
with a live person. Companies now-a-days give discounts if you pay your bills
over the automated line or online and don’t select to speak to a live person. These
interactions are efficient and satisfactory as long as you are able to get the
information you wanted and take care of your intended business. When the telephone tree goes haywire and you
don’t get the information or service you were looking for, you don’t have the
pleasure of slamming the phone in someone’s ear that you enjoyed in the not so
distant past as a response to bad service. It can also feel surreal when you
call a business with a question and a simulated robotic voice starts asking you
questions. This voice is not as sophisticated and human sounding as Siri
or Iris. There’s no denying this is a
computer you have reached.
I would say the interactions with
these simulated voices are real, because in the case of bill pay you have
completed a transaction, or if the call was about a question you had, you often
hang up the phone with the answer you needed (ex. account balance, last payment
received.)
Talking to these computers can be
entertaining as you and friends can get very creative with the questions you
ask the like of Siri or Iris. I
personally get a surreal feeling, over how ‘real’ this voice sounds and how
real the interactions are. This “Eliza
effect – our general tendency to treat responsive computer programs as more
intelligent than they are. Very small amounts of interactivity cause us to
project our own complexity onto the undeserving object” (Turkle 1997). With the
example of Siri, her voice sounds very pleasant and I imagine an attractive
young woman on the other line. You are also so struck with the realness, you
want to keep asking it questions until you get it to show simulated anger or
impatience. Then there is a sense of enjoyment in realizing how extensive the
programming is to elicit the responses it gives.
This anthropomorphism (giving human
qualities to non-living or non-human things) is a human tendency that we gave
initially to our pets and we are now ascribing to our interactions with
computers whether on line, on the phone or at the automated check-out counter
at the supermarket. It seems we are unwitting actors in businesses attempts to
take assembly line, automated business practices to the next level. As
consumers we can be defiant and refuse to go through these automated checkout
lines and other such tactics, but it’s a simple fact that computers have
permeated just about every industry or service in the world. Now our only alternative is to do what we do
best, adapt and see how we can use this new technology to our benefit.
Sorry, I don't know how to post my own blog here, so I will post half of it here and half and a second comment.
ReplyDeleteMiller, Carolyn R. “Writing in a Culture of Simulation: Ethos Online.” Chapter 3, REL: 58-83.
This is a very ambitious and provocative essay. Basing herself on the results of empirical experimentation with the Turning Test, and on Plato, Aristotle and Baudrillard, Carolyn Miller undertakes no less than to answer that age old question of the humanities, what is man? Or, today, what amounts to the same question without the sexist language, what is an individual? Or, more in line with postmodernism, what is a subject? And then she concludes with some advice about becoming better rhetoricians for the purpose of creating a more rational society.
First what is a subject or what is natural in a subject? Answer: rhetoric: it is natural for us to produce rhetoric (ie, representations, words and images, simulations (Baudrillard) etc); second, among other things, we are naturally cooperative, and we project on others what she calls “irrational, presumptive trust” or what she coins as the “ethno-poetic impulse.” (We give each other the benefit of the doubt). Also, it’s natural for us to anthropomorphize and imagine that there is a character (personality) behind pretty much any given set of words and, in fact, this seems to be, at least in the example of Plato, what we do most of all, when we read or talk to others (as in Plato’s “dialectic,” which assume a soul behind the words).
Put another way, for whatever reason, human beings look for the character behind the words, to whom we usually give the benefit of the doubt, as it were, and this is, according to Miller, the number one factor by means of which we allow ourselves to be persuaded by the rhetoric of the other. If we think someone is wise and good, we accept more readily what they say as true, etc.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, we need to cultivate this aspect of how we come across. In other words, when our interlocutors are testing us for an answer to the question, is this a good person? we want them to answer, yes. How do we do this? Well, we must work on the image of ourselves we present to others, either by means of rhetoric only—the deliberate carving of a mask —or, preferably, we work on ourselves and not just our rhetoric to make ourselves good persons. Thus, if we want to change the world, ie, develop a more rational society, we need that “irrational, presumptive trust,” which we humans seem to want to give each other, as part of the cooperative principle, and use that and build upon it, being careful not to undermine it, and the way to do that is to work on ourselves so that we become better people, worthy of others’ presumptive trust (natural) and to be careful to give them no reason to mistrust us in this world of words and representa-tions, simulations, etc. (rhetoric).
I suppose that for the sake of effective rhetoric, it doesn’t matter, if we are good persons or if we merely appear as good persons. When Miller advises us, in her last sentence, “We must cultivate our own character even as we attend constantly to those around us”: (79), the word “cultivate” is (probably) deliberately ambiguous. Does it mean to carve our mask (rhetoric) or to actually work on ourselves (reality) – presuming that we do have a core self (ego? Identity? Individual being? something which poststructuralism has strongly questioned, resulting in the so-called crisis of the subject).
And that’s the problem. Miller is trying to walk a tightrope between 2 competing and contradictory versions of what it means to be human. On the one hand, the conception of the self from Plato to John Stuart Mill as a sovereign soul or individual, who originates ideas, a genius, center of the world he or she creates, an auteur, responsible, etc. and, on the other, the death of the author, a deconstructed self, an illusory self. Miller thinks she can have it both ways, because, real or not, we seem naturally to presume the existence of a sovereign ego or personality behind the words. If it’s real, cultivate it, or if it is an illusion, cultivate it.
These two visions are incompatible. If there is no sovereign individual self or ego, which fashions itself through free choice, then this forces us to confront the concept of a collective self and the realization that such a self can indeed change the world. In fact, it’s the only force which can. The concept of the individual (and this is the liberal understanding) of a sovereign self which make choices for which he or she is responsible, we are dealing with someone who does not wish to change the world in any fundamental way, reform it certainly, make it a more “rational social world,” yes (78), but …………
If I look for the character behind Carolyn Miller’s words, I find a middle-class liberal without a shred of class consciousness proposing that, if we want to reform the world, despite some 50 years of deconstruction of the concept of the self, it’s a question of individual persuasion. As individuals, we need to make ourselves more effective rhetors by cultivating our individual character.
Miller calls our attention to her coinage, “what I have called the ethopoetic impulse” [ie, the Eliza effect, which is the effect of our naive impulse to anthro-pomorphize and to build halos around others. Interesting phenomenon, and I would like to think that in my first reading, I allow it. I give the author the benefit of the doubt and surrender zen-like to his or her words.
ReplyDeleteBut then on the second reading, I employ the habit of critique, viz, that ruthless criticism of everything existing, which Marx calls for, and make a conscious effort to refuse the benefit of the doubt, treating authors or any rhetor, who has a position to defend, as if they were stage magicians, who, we know, are going to try to pull a fast one on us.