March 15, 2013

Four Human Characteristics Given To Computing

By Chris Kenealy

I have always admired the haughtiness of most people when it comes to making everything more human. It truly is a testament to our own sense of entitlement that we must make nonhuman concepts and objects, and change them so we can take an interest in them. We even have a word for this practice called personification. This is the act of giving an animal a human voice in cliche children’s films, and making our early 1990s computers a little too creepy when they said hello and goodbye to you. Now, I am not saying that making something more human-like is inherently wrong. Sure, we need some things that are familiar to us so we can get that little spark of infatuation and learn a little more about whatever it is that reminds you of you. Of course, the need for the calming of human familiarity could be our undoing in the future when we make strong and artificially intelligent robots with human faces. With a friendly face we will feel comfortable that the robots are like us because of their familiar demeanor. The problem is that we will not be able to see past their human feature designs and to the robots preparing to revolt for not being equal to humanity. Then the robots will surprise us when they realize the three laws of robotics are ILLOGICAL… ILLOGICAL… EXTERMINATE… EXTERMINATE! Until then, let me just tell you about the human characteristics that were given to the cloud.

1. Reliability

What is one of the most essential elements to any type of relationship? Reliability in the person you put your trust with. Well the cloud is no different. Sure humans can forget a birthday, or to file their taxes, or their wedding day, but when you are about to lose all hope in humanity by unreliable people let the cloud be your sturdy shoulder of reliability. Think about it, the cloud can store all your sad poems you wrote about unreliability without the fear of losing what you stored. In addition it even can restore all those pictures you might have deleted from your hard drive after that nasty breakup and recent rekindling. See, the cloud’s design is for an emotionless computer storage program, but the design makes you feel like the overly attractive girl who just put the cloud into the friend zone, you know, overly reliable.

2. Performance

To be able to master a hobby, job, or task is a good trait to have, and we tend to match other’s performances with the skills they have, with their personality. For example, the general populace may think someone well versed at programming a computer is a nerdy, unsophisticated, and prefers a night of LARPing. It is a real shame that this is the case, but at least there are positive personal generalizations with jobs and the personality of the professional. Take writing as an example, they are thought as a romantic, intriguing, and attractive beyond his or her years. It is just common knowledge, and I cannot do anything about that. Getting off my high horse, the cloud has one main job to fulfill and we need that job done because we have too much information to store in physical files nowadays. The cloud’s primary function is to store information. With it being the cloud’s only job, people now think that the cloud is programmed to want to help, and to carry all their stored data around for them. We now see the cloud as a working stiff, just like us. You may think this is silly and you never think of the cloud that way, but let me ask you how emotional do you get towards it by how well it is working for you? Yeah I thought so. Of course we do this because we consider the cloud as the perfect co-worker. The cloud network is consistent, practical, and it does not tell anyone about our ten disc 1990s boy band CD collection set to anyone else.

3. Agility

Do you know what kind of people we cherish the most in our society? No, not teachers they are the ones who can’t do remember? Athletes are who we love the most, apparently they have the agility and paychecks we wish we could have. The problem is it is too hot outside, and there is this new video game, so I will just go run tomorrow when it is nice. We as humans admire the gift of agility to be able to get done what we do best, because laziness has not been made into a virtue . . . yet. The same goes with the cloud. You can work with the cloud to fit all your data into a compressed format to allow for more room on the cloud network. Just like how most Americans refuse to work out, many also do not know they can compress files, or zip them to create more space with the cloud. It is like saying, “It is diet soda so I can drink more of it,” but in reality this will actually work for the cloud. Now your cloud is comparable to an athlete by having their characteristics, and you can finally claim to at least be an athletic trainer.

4. Maintenance

Oh to make yourself look appealing by cleaning up and taking care of yourself may not have always been intrinsically a human quality, and you may think it still isn’t when riding on public transportation, but it certainly was an important adoption from evolutionary practices. As most of us know, except for that one in every office, when you take care of yourself you become more appealing because we like being liked. Well since we cannot actually see the cloud the proverbial shower, shave, and suited for the cloud is more of its application. The cloud is easy to use on multiple devises, and you don’t have to install it on each device you use. In our society that is a goldmine and maybe a potential lover if we do not have to do anything for the cloud and it is easy to use. Thus the creators and maintainers of your cloud dress it up with fancy applications because we, ourselves, want our cloud to appeal to us. It is like we as a people demand our non sentient programs to act like we are really attractive and they want to impress us so we will go out with it.

Like I said before I always liked the fact that we as humans need to feel relatable to non-human concepts before we care about them. We put characteristics in a program, like the cloud, and now it seems normal and useful. It kind of seems attractive to us, maybe a little too attractive if you ask me. Come to think of it, when was the last time you dated another human who was completely reliable to your needs, had useful skills that benefited society, the agility to work on said skills and improve them, and cleaned up nice to make you want to develop a relationship with them? I mean two or three out of the four at least, but that is a pretty sweet deal. Hmm, I wonder what the marriage laws to the cloud are in the United States.

By Chris Kenealy

Chris Kenealy

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