Monica's old-fashioned project website and blog. Permanently a work in progress. Maybe someday there will be a Dark Mode.
Calm robotics is the concept of robotics without constant, self-interested surveillance and endless uncertainty about what “belongs” to you and what that means. It’s the idea of having autonomous, environment-aware computers in your space without having to choose between anxiety and apathy.
In 1995, back when computers still used hard disks and you might have paid $3/hour to get online, a concept called “calm technology” took its first steps. Calm Technology described how computers could still be useful without requiring your full attention – they would interrupt if something was important, not every time they had something to say. But in those days, interruptions were really the worst of what computers could “do” to you. We barely had the internet; smartphones wouldn’t show up for years. Don’t even get me started on cameras. All the information that strangers had on you, you gave to them yourself.
Now that cameras and microphones are everywhere, and anything you might want to know can be stored or transmitted with almost zero effort, the “calm” in calm technology has to evolve to cover more ground. My own interest is in robotics, specifically household (consumer) robotics. I’d love to have a little guy sitting on my desk or kitchen table, integrated into my daily life. However, this is what it would mean for me today:
And, you know what? No. Not worth it.
The problem is that when you own a robot, that robot isn’t owned completely on your terms, and you know it. You exchange money once, to bring the object home. Then you might pay for a subscription on top of that, for services that can’t be purchased up front – this is fine, you’re still in control. But now the robot is scanning its environment, which includes you and everyone else in your home. These scans become “data”, and this data becomes part of a cascading series of sales and trades – or it’s used directly by the company – or it just sits on someone else’s servers, waiting to be useful. You can’t possibly know. It isn’t yours anymore. And nothing in that robot’s privacy policy (which you didn’t read), with its vague language about “third-party partners” and “improving our product”, is intended to make you more informed. Its sole purpose is to assure you that you’ve consented to everything in advance.
This isn’t so bad when it’s a single app on your phone, designed for a single purpose. (Well, maybe it is, but that’s not my focus right now.) How are we to understand this behavior from an object that isn’t meant to be a product or a service, but a friend? Many people genuinely won’t care, and to them I say: fair enough, I wish you the best. For the rest of us, our feelings range from “absolute dealbreaker” to a kind of unarticulated, low-level anxiety about what might be happening behind the scenes, but probably isn’t, except when it is.
This is no way to live. And it doesn’t have to be this way. The fix is very simple: draw a clear line that the robot is beholden to you and to itself, and no one else. Data isn’t purchased, exchanged, or stored except by active and ongoing consent, when it benefits you both. Now when the robot is reading your face, or hearing your voice, or fetching a beer from your fridge, its knowledge isn’t going anywhere unless you chose it in advance. Oh, this will “stifle innovation”? Good. Innovation built at your own expense isn’t worth having.
This is the fundamental premise of calm robotics: the robot is there for you more than anyone else. The implementation is another matter, and will have to be addressed in another post.