This post isn’t about the Uncanny Valley theory - but rather, my theory of something with a similar concept. Whilst the Uncanny Valley is a theory associated with physical human facsimiles, this theory is based upon the behaviour of various invisible and pervasive technologies.
Before I start, I would like to apologise if there is any crossover with any existing theory - I have done as much research as I can conceive to be reasonable, and I have not come across any theory or observations presented in such a defined manner. I’m trying to develop this theory further into a more complete, and all-encompassing approach to seemingly-invisible feedback for physical-feedback systems - so please bear with me, as I evolve these initial topics and ideas into something more concrete.
Marc Weiser’s writings and musings are what got me started on this, in particular, a ‘vision’ he wrote of in 1991 in his writing “The Computer for the 21st Century.” This is his vision of an interactive and ubiquitous future:
Sal awakens [… she] looks out her windows at her neighborhood. Sunlight and a fence are visible through one, but through others she sees electronic trails that have been kept for her of neighbors coming and going during the early morning. Privacy conventions and practical data rates prevent displaying video footage, but time markers and electronic tracks on the neighborhood map let Sal feel cozy in her street.
At breakfast Sal reads the news. She still prefers the paper form, as do most people. She spots an interesting quote from a columnist in the business section. She wipes her pen over the newspaper’s name, date, section, and page number and then circles the
quote. The pen sends a message to the paper, which transmits the quote to her office.
[…] As she walks into the building the machines in her office prepare to log her in, but don’t complete the sequence until she actually enters her office. On her way, she stops by the offices of four or five colleagues to exchange greetings and news.
Sal doesn’t remember Mary, but she does vaguely remember the meeting. She quickly starts a search for meetings in the past two weeks with more than 6 people not previously in meetings with her, and finds the one. The attendees’ names pop up, and she sees Mary. As is common in meetings, Mary made some biographical information about herself available to the other attendees, and Sal sees some common background. She’ll just send Mary a note and see what’s up.
Some of you might say that there’s nothing particularly uncanny or repulsive about anything there and, for the most part, you’d be right - but my idea extends just a little further into the vision Weiser saw for ubiquitous computing.
The idea of sharing information about yourself, is nothing new. From the dawn of time, humankind has been sharing personal information, it’s part of communication. However, some things we like to keep to ourselves - be it our habits, our sexual practices, or whatever… some things are simply personal.
One of the things that we treasure most of all, as humans, is our set of routines and behaviours - things that we do uniquely, and in a way that makes us all individual. This behavioural information is only able to be processed if various aspects of our behaviour are collated together. How we walk may dictate our attitude, how we breath may dictate our level of fitness, how our eyes move may dictate how distracted we are - these things all identify traits and emotions in us, that are perceivable by others, in light of prior knowledge about our behaviour. It’s how we identify someone just from hearing a story about their actions, or similar.
This information, you might say, is very personal - but not very private. This information is constantly on public display and we are constantly broadcasting information about ourselves to the outside world by the above means and many more. The problem comes - and, indeed, this theory presents itself - when we see our own subconscious, behavioural patterns mimicked accurately by invisible entities.
Enough people become scared when a computer’s mouse cursor moves by itself, not because their first thought is that a foreign party is moving their mouse, but because a human-dependent task is being performed, invisibly, by a machine. (”My mouse is moving by itself!” as opposed to “Someone is moving my mouse for me!”)
This sort of situation is the basis for what I’m calling The Invisible Uncanny Valley - not because it does not exist, but because it pertains to those actions performed ‘invisibly’ by pervasive technologies. For a bit of background, let’s go a bit deeper into some of the ideals of pervasive computing as seen from a developmental and academic viewpoint.
I spend two hours each week being lectured by two men who are very heavily involved in research for pervasive and ubiquitous computing. Both men are extremely passionate about their subject and, indeed, spend their lives trying to find ways to make human life easier through technology. Between them, they have written numerous books, journals and articles on the topic of pervasive developments. I have had the privilege of being able to learn about such developments straight from the people who help to raise the ‘pervasive computing’ bar. It is they who have sparked my interest in pervasive technologies, but this is not a straight-out, no-holds-barred advocacy of pervasive computing.
Most of the things that I hear are tremendously exciting ways forward for humankind, traffic monitoring, digital newspapers, accident-avoiding cars - all with great potential at the cost of only a little privacy. The issue of the little cost to privacy is not one to cover here, but something I’ll probably delve into at a later date. The issue here is unique identification and replication of behaviour.
One of the things that is very popular, in pervasive computing circles, is the concept of ’smart floors’ - floors that recognise users individually and uniquely by their walking patterns. These floors would contain millions of pressure sensors, simply to aid in identifying a particular user, to be able to track the user’s movements and to adjust the surrounding environment to the user’s liking. There are, of course, many similar ideas in pervasive computing, but this one springs to mind, readily. The idea here is to personalise the user’s environment to suit the user. “Perfect!”, you may say, “An environment that dynamically adjusts to me.” and that would, indeed, appear to be superb on a theoretical and conscious level.
My theory for The Invisible Uncanny Valley extends to the subconscious, however, to the actions that a human performs as part of a daily routine, or a lifetime trend, or even just out of a desire to be in control of a situation.
Take, for example, a light dimmer switch. I know, that as I walk into a room in my house, I will subconsciously find a dimmer switch and adjust that light to a level that suits me, to suit my own preferences. If the light were to dim or brighten, I would look to see whether another visible entity had adjusted the switch, and would - no doubt - become concerned if there was no immediate, physical cause. The actions associated with the light-switch are inherently physical - even if they are subconscious.
Actions of this type are the basis for my Invisible Uncanny Valley: human-associated actions, performed by non-human, seemingly invisible, devices (i.e. devices that do not produce an immediately visible input to a feedback system, but rather provide physical input to the system on a sub-visible level). It is at this point that the association with the ‘physical’ Uncanny Valley theory is strongest - at the point where something is too-human for defects to be seen as an attempt at humanity - but where they are seen as a departure from normal human behaviour, towards something ‘weird’ or foreign. The ‘defect’ here being the lack of immediately visible, physical input.
Does a light turn on without someone to turn it on? This and other similar things are a ploy of many cheap (and not so cheap) horror movies - human actions being performed by non-human entities. Human activities not accompanied by a human hand to perform them or commence them.
Whilst many of these automated ideas sound perfect in theory, we must consider that graphical improvements in 3D models in movies and games, as well as improvements to android technology, are often still considered an incredible boon to society - yet The Uncanny Valley is proven, and re-proven, time and time again (with some dispute, mainly from those with a vested interest in the field of robotics and android development).
In short, and after much of this providing an introductory background to my (as yet, untested) claims, I present to you the main points and facets of my theory:
- Actions commonly associated with visible, human behaviour (such as those that request or effect a response or action), are expected to be performed by a human (or, at least, by some visible physical object or entity). In the case of one such behaviour being fulfilled automatically, with no apparent physical input (i.e. with invisibility), an observing human will become uncomfortable due to the displayed similarities to human behaviour, without any human interaction.
- These ‘visible human behaviour’ events are not static, and can be learned or unlearned with time (or as physical behavioural standards change), reducing the effect of The Invisible Uncanny Valley. This means that a particular visible, human-associated task could, over an extended period of time, become widely attributed to a non-human, invisible, entity, should the task be universally performed by a non-human, invisible entity. (This is as opposed to a task being locally performed, which would lead external parties to become uncomfortable on encountering the local environment.)
- In order to ’solve’ any discomfort caused by any one inherently physical behavioural standard, a universal change in the approach to the behaviour is required. Local changes to the behaviour only serve to solve the problem for some small portion of humanity, whilst make the fear of the invisible all the more compound in parties external to the adapted local behavioural environment.
Please note, this theory is entirely untested, but derives a number of its assumptions from the conclusions of the ‘physical’ Uncanny Valley theory.
I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts on this topic. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot, and something that I feel may become a greater issue within society as many of our visual, human-associated tasks become more and more automated. After all, have you ever had that discussion where someone says “there are just some things that should only be done by humans.”? I think it’s those type of things we need to worry about.
