Uncomfortable Ideas: How Close Are They?

"It is not too early to think about the future difficulties that intelligent and emotional machines may give rise to. There are numerous practical, moral, legal, and ethical issues to think about. Most are still far in the future, but that is a good reason to start now – so that when problems arrive, we will be ready."

This is how a cognitive scientist named Donald A. Norman, in his 2004 book Emotional Design, briefly touches upon different dimensions to consider about possible scientific developments in the future. A very similar hypothetical question was raised by Magnus Lindkvist (the head of our course "Trendspotting and Future Thinking" at Konstfack) when he told us not to "be afraid of uncomfortable ideas", to which he provided an example by naming a possible future debate as "sex robots in the shape of children".


Personally, I can't say this debate would be much to my surprise. Ethics are not at the top of many people's lists even today, and this creates even more controversy if those people are in a powerful position in the society. And I'm not even talking about child pornography here—at least not in the traditional sense.

Take the marketing and advertisement business, for instance. In Turkey, there are, apparently, no rules whatsoever regulating the abuse of children as a marketing tool. Therefore most of the largest brands are free to develop marketing strategies that are mainly based on children (e.g. using them as main characters). And if those brands were ones that sell diapers, infant food or toys, etc. I maybe might have had more sympathy for them. However, one of those brands is in the business of providing mobile communications services. That's a bit out of context, huh?

One cannot find a good reason behind such abuse—other than breeding fresh new generations of greedy consumers. It could very well be argued that this is as valid an ethical debate as "sex robots in the shape of children"—or, at least, that such "uncomfortable ideas" are closer to us than we think they would be.