satisficing - Seeking or achieving a satisfactory outcome, rather than the best possible. (Deardorff's Glossary of International Economics.)
In a recent article in the New York Times, The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s, Brad Stone discusses how his 2 year old now (correctly) identifies a Kindle as "a book," and how every generation is so different from the previous, the pace of change so fast that 40-somethings are bewildered by their wired, multitasking, overachieving progeny. (Hmph. He hasn't met my family.) And I've seen other kids expect laptop screens to be touchable. Hell, I wonder why my laptop screen isn't touchable, and have run synclient into the ground trying to get the touchpad to be as responsive as an iPod.
One of his observations is this:
Stone has put his finger on a problem Peter Watts covered extensively in his book Blindsight, and I've been hammering on since the late 1980s: every iteration of technology that replaces some form of human/human interaction (or human/animal interaction) will satisfice a larger pool of people than the previous iteration. Eventually, at some tipping point, the satisfactory outcome will become the preferable one: having a real pet will be closed in by the PETAs on one side ("Keeping a real animal is cruel!") and the descendants of the Zhou-Zhou ("Keeping a real animal is icky, inconvenient, and allergenic!") and will eventually become taboo.
The same will become true for human relationships. That'll take longer, but eventually it will become true. Having emotional expectations of your partner will seem like an imposition: doing it to a satisfactor robot will seem like a relief to all concerned.
In a recent article in the New York Times, The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s, Brad Stone discusses how his 2 year old now (correctly) identifies a Kindle as "a book," and how every generation is so different from the previous, the pace of change so fast that 40-somethings are bewildered by their wired, multitasking, overachieving progeny. (Hmph. He hasn't met my family.) And I've seen other kids expect laptop screens to be touchable. Hell, I wonder why my laptop screen isn't touchable, and have run synclient into the ground trying to get the touchpad to be as responsive as an iPod.
One of his observations is this:
And after my 4-year-old niece received the very hot Zhou-Zhou pet hamster for Christmas, I pointed out that the toy was essentially a robot, with some basic obstacle avoidance skills. She replied matter-of-factly: "It's not a robot. It's a pet."Well, no. It satisfices as a pet, which is different than saying it is a pet. And for some fraction of the population, satisficing is all that's necessary.
Stone has put his finger on a problem Peter Watts covered extensively in his book Blindsight, and I've been hammering on since the late 1980s: every iteration of technology that replaces some form of human/human interaction (or human/animal interaction) will satisfice a larger pool of people than the previous iteration. Eventually, at some tipping point, the satisfactory outcome will become the preferable one: having a real pet will be closed in by the PETAs on one side ("Keeping a real animal is cruel!") and the descendants of the Zhou-Zhou ("Keeping a real animal is icky, inconvenient, and allergenic!") and will eventually become taboo.
The same will become true for human relationships. That'll take longer, but eventually it will become true. Having emotional expectations of your partner will seem like an imposition: doing it to a satisfactor robot will seem like a relief to all concerned.
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