A Brief History of The Future

Act 2 Chapter 1

The field of Human-Computer Interaction has advanced rapidly over the past decade. Long gone are the days where people type in commands with strict linguistic rules into a screen just to write a document. We even got rid of peripheral devices acting as input. You’re right, everything is simply happening at the center: the user’s own brain. Here at SEKI-HCI Research Center, we are not just developing kernels to be installed on your head, literally. We are the pioneers of the modern Human-Computer Interfaces! Now you can combine all the good things about visual, audio, and sensory based interfaces, making everything feels organic and actually real-time. You’re thinking of printing that one medical form you need to fill out? Well you’re in luck! With just a single thought firing from your neurons, our smart compiler will translate that into machine codes that will execute the task at hand. You’re thinking of sending a message about reconnecting to your estranged brother? Just sent it, and oops, can’t redact that :D I hope you’re not drunk when thinking of doing that.

[CUE LAUGHING TRACK]

All of that, simply done. No need to remember syntax that doesn’t even make sense! And don’t worry about service availability! Every feature we presented here are guaranteed to be available on all provinces, cities, regencies, down to individual villages (we are not forgetting our humble beginnings). Our infrastructure spans nationally. We are trying to hit 200 million active users nationally before expanding to neighboring countries and eventually, the world. Everything, you can think of, is a reality. Welcome, to the future.

I have to admit I am not the type to turn on my huge monitor and watch some tech startup’s CEO do their pitch deck. I think most of them are scams anyway. The more confident you are with your product, the less confident I am with it. But something about this thing that combines machine and flesh captivates me, this is exactly what I need for my project. I mean think about it, this kernel is fast and small enough to be able to decipher streams of information from your brain. Imagine what it needs to do to make that real time, does it use some new signal processing method I haven’t heard of? But anyway, if it can translate your thoughts into commands in real time, then it definitely can generate a virtual being that both learn from the environment and shape the environment around them.

I began following this new startup by subscribing to their newsletter. At some point when they had Dev Cons, I’d hop in and asked few questions, mostly technical details. I wanted to make my own virtual environment based on what they already built, basically I wanted to fork their project. They were super helpful, typical of an emerging startup. However something changed one time, when the enigmatic CEO finally emerged. Zulkifli is a rather interesting character of the SEKI-HCI project. If you see his evolution from a business competition obsessed undergraduate IT student turn CEO of a startup pitching his product while wearing a mask I can only describe as probably coming from a kinky underground sex cult, one has to ask, just what the hell happened to him? Is the business world that carnivorous? And for some reasons people like it. No one left the Dev Con with Zulkifli in it unconvinced of his idea, as if he had the magic to make everyone agree with him. I feel like he’d be a good cult leader, just saying. That, or it’s just confidence built from years of pitching his ideas that eventually pays off, and I’d know nothing about this because socializing isn’t something I’m good at. Despite the oddity, he seemed to know a particular problem I was also stumbling upon: what’s the most efficient way to filter for memories? My walled garden wasn’t good enough to prevent thought interference, from neighboring gardens and from my own thoughts. The vessel was more of like mom’s gentleness with eve’s sense of humor and jenny’s experience seen from my perspective. I didn’t want that, and I was looking for a simple insulation solution but the CEO’s answers stunned me.

“A software level insulation will not work as good as a hardware level insulation. Why not take advantage of our sophisticated Thought Filter module? Make multiple pipelines for each garden and filter the memories before entering the environment. In fact, why not take it the next level and filter your own thoughts and emotions?”

Suddenly something clicked inside my head. First and foremost, you have a Thought Filter module? Isn’t that quite a slippery slope to privacy invasion? But I didn’t want to think about that, since I found a rather innocent secondary use of this new technology. You see, as you grow old people tend to be more, how do I say this without sounding cynical, closed. They’re cold. They’re scary. They see your worth in metrics that drive profits. People are expecting something from you, people expect you to be mature. I spent most of my life trying to figure out what the heck that word even means, but I think I got it now. This is revolutionary, I don’t need to lower my guards and do awkward little dances with someone I just know their name to find comfort and inner peace!

To be mature, is to be like machines. They’re dependable. They’re reliable. They’re trustworthy. Anything you could think of, they will do it efficiently both in manner of cost and time.

To be mature, is to be like machines. They’re built to be durable. They’re strong. They have bodies made out of solid steel. Anything bad happening to them, they will come back stronger.

Most importantly, to be mature is to be logical. They are not confined by what happened in the past. By the sharp words coming out of someone that yells on top of their lungs. By the fear of intimacy and vulnerability. By the haunting memories of someone you deeply cared for. They are also not bound to the future. No fear of the uncertain future will ever bring them down. They merely exist in the here and now. All they know is to be locally efficient, like a greedy algorithm.

I seek, to become a machine myself.