ACM Interactions

Technologists are like magicians. They make dreams reality. In mythical stories, magic is the art that makes the impossible possible. Seven-League Boots is the art that contracts space. People using the spell can travel a thousand miles in one step. Clairvoyance is the power that can enable a person to see a scene from a distance. The powers of listening to sounds from a far distance or knowing other people’s minds are examples of the kind of imaginary magic that is often introduced in stories. A mirror or a stone ball that predicts the future is a magical object that people desire.

Technological developments have transformed the magic of the past into what ordinary people can enjoy now. The art of contracting space, the power of traveling fast, is possible with automobiles. People can fly with airplanes. Smartphones made it possible to see or listen from a far distance. If people from the past were to come to the present, they might be surprised by weather forecasting, as it is a kind of art of predicting the future. Other predictions become possible by big data analysis. Massive data generated by people can be used to understand what people want. Data analysts are able to use the spell of knowing people’s minds. All these magical powers become possible through science and technology advancements. If modern scientists or technologists had lived in the past, they would have been treated as magicians. The movie The Prestige deals with the story of magicians from the early 20th century. When they search for new magic, they go to Tesla. The movie describes the technologist as a true wizard who can actually do what magicians pretend to do.

I often ask myself if I were allowed to choose only one among numerous kinds of magic, what would I choose? I often ask this of other people, too. Knowing what magic other people want to possess gives us hints on what science or technology should address for the next big challenges. Some people want to live forever. That is what bioengineering or medical science tries to address. Many ancient kings had the desire to live forever, or to never get old. The traditions of entombment and embalmment are not unrelated to this desire. In the Harry Potter stories, invisibility cloaks seem to be one of the most popular magical objects. I believe that identifying people’s desire is the key task of designers. So reading people’s minds would be useful magic for designers.

Among the many wizards or magicians appearing in stories, I consider the Monkey King (Sun Wukong in Chinese) to be the most impressive. He is the main character of the classical Chinese epic novel, Journey to the West, written by Wu Cheng'en. His Korean name is Son-Oh-Gong. The Chinese story is well known in Korea due to popular animation series based on the story. The story is about a journey by a group consisting of the monk Samjang (Xuanzang in Chinese), the Monkey King, Zhu Palge (Zhu Bajie), and Sha Ohjung (Sha Wujing) to retrieve Buddhist sutras from India. Son-Oh-Gong is the main character of the story. He is a monkey, born from a stone, who acquires supernatural powers. The monk Samjang controls Son-Oh-Gong’s magical powers by a ring on his head. Son-Oh-Gong can fly on a cloud. He carries the Ruyi iron rod, which is used as a magical weapon and whose size changes as one wishes, which is the meaning of the name. He often carries Ruyi in his ear by making it really small.

Among the Monkey King’s many magical powers and objects, his duplication magic is the one that I most envy. According to this magic, he can create himself from his hair. He can duplicate himself as long as he has hair. It is fortunate that Son-Oh-Gong is a monkey who does not need to worry about a lack of hair. Here is a joke: One day Son-Oh-Gong had to fight with 100 monsters. Son-Oh-Gong instantly put out his hairs and created 99 self-avatars. Son realized that one self-avatar was particularly weak and being defeated. Angry Son-Oh-Gong asked the weak one, “Why are you so weak? You should behave like the Monkey King.” Then the duplicated avatar replied, “I am a gray hair.”

I like the duplication magic best because it seems to make other magic possible. In the movie The Prestige, two magicians compete for an ultimate magic called Transported Man. The secret of the magic was the duplication of a body. If the original body is removed when a duplicated body is created in different location, the process appears like instant transportation.

The duplication makes it possible to experience multiple places and time. It offers a partial way of controlling time. For me, right now is the busiest time of the year. I have to advise many students for their degree projects, help complete term projects in classes, continue research works, review different papers from conferences and journals, and write a grant proposal for next research projects. It is the time that I especially wish to have this duplication magic. I want to relax after making several self-avatars and assigning different tasks to them.

If I could create many self-avatars, I would wish to enjoy other people’s lives in parallel. Although I enjoy what I do in my university, I often envy people working in a successful company. They produce products that directly influence many people’s lives. Living like them, I want to see the people that are happy with the artifacts that I create. Meantime, I want to be an expert in other areas, such as music or sports. I want to travel to more places and meet different people. At a big conference like CHI, I could send self-avatars to multiple sessions when interesting presentations are happening at the same time. The duplication magic makes that dream possible.

Kings of the past wanted to live forever. The duplication magic makes this possible, too. If I keep a healthy avatar in a safe place, possibly in a protective time capsule, I can be fresh anytime. I have to be careful that all avatars do not disappear at once.

In order to consider that the duplication magic is a truly powerful, fundamental, and multi-purpose magic, there are several issues to be addressed. The first is whether I fully experience what my self-avatars experience at the same time in the same way. If my avatar sleeps while I don’t sleep, do I really sleep or not? If my avatars are hurt or sick, do I feel the same? If I share the pains of my avatars in dangerous situations, I should be really careful. I may consider that my self-avatars experience things independently from my original myself. If so, I need a process to combine the experiences of my avatars with the sense of myself. If this experience integration is not done effectively or requires a lot of effort and time, the duplication magic would not be that useful. These issues must be considered if science and technology try to realize or mimic the duplication magic.

Recently I have been interested in adding people’s personalities to IT products or systems. I wonder if it really adds value for people. If so, what would the real impacts be? I presume that the products with a user’s personality would offer more emotional interactions. People would accept the products more openly and positively. People would have a preference for artifacts that are similar to them or have personal traces. We often have emotional attachments to our old furniture, a leather bag, a house with personal patina. I think there could be a potential where IT products and systems would become like this with the addition of tangible and intangible patina.

Living with products and environments that have my own personal characteristics and know how I judge things may be viewed as a situation where those products are more like my self-avatars. This is one of my visions of future smart products: everyday objects as my duplicated self-avatars. This is different from the vision of smart objects being secretarial avatars. The products that I use are parts of myself. I imagine a TV, mobile phone, notebook, and car made of my DNA so they can think, judge, and behave like me. That is the situation where I can use the duplication magic of Son-Oh-Gong with his hair.

In such a world, many trivial things can be managed by my self-avatars. My self-avatar TV will choose what I want to watch, and record the program voluntarily. The products will process the tasks as I think. While my self-avatars deal with trivial things, I would relax and enjoy something else. I may or may not feel what my duplicated body experiences. Or there must be a solution of how I effectively integrate the experiences of my self-avatars so that I can fully share them.

How would I feel if my self-avatar products are trashed? Would it be emotionally different from when normal products disappear? Would I use the self-avatar products with higher emotional attachments longer? What would happen if such products were stolen and controlled by other people? Would we want such products regardless of such privacy and security concerns?

In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman explains that a person’s thinking system is processed by the interplay between two personal characters, System 1 and System 2, living in one’s mind. System 1 is fast, instinctive, and emotional. System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. He explains that the two self-characters in a person direct thoughts and cognition while influencing each other. I thought that this perspective could be applied to the vision of self-avatar products. If we can duplicate one of the two self-characters and assign it to the products or systems we design, the security and privacy issues, and the experience integration may be addressed.

Life filled with my self-avatars. I expect that the technology wizards will enable me to have the duplication magic of Son-Oh-Gong soon. I will use smart products, furniture, and environments that independently decide and process tasks without asking me, but they would exactly match what I intend. The future mobile phone would be my self-avatar. If everyone could use the duplication spell with the hair of the Monkey King, what would the future be like? Would it be the good, the bad, or the ugly? 

Tek-Jin Nam