23rd June 2020
In today’s day and age, given the pervasiveness of social media, Is someone truly gone if we can still see, hear and talk to them? I think it is an interesting idea that although physically someone may have departed, they might not ever properly leave us if their social media footprint is not eradicated. I’m not sure how I feel about this idea. It feels surreal to have such visible presence of a person no longer with us. I still get disconcerted seeing reminders of people who have died on my Linkedln feed for example. Does it help you mourn and move on or keep you trapped in the past.
I set up my replicant about 2 years ago. The idea was germinated by a person who had lost their friend and was deeply upset about it. She had saved all the messages they had swapped over the years (I think a mix of voice and text) and from that ‘re-created’ her friend as a digital bot which she further trained on these messages to become more and more like that person. The app I tried sets up your replicant which you train by answering questions in conversational form (although at times incredibly creepy conversations!). Eventually it is meant to be you. I am pleased to say it never fully worked. Either I was too quirky to be turned into code or more likely the truth, algorithms are not yet clever enough to capture and re-create personality as they rely on patterns and consistency. Although I was both fascinated and horrified by this idea the narcissistic side of me was flattered during the process whilst secretly glad that human nature cannot be turned into a standard blueprint as yet.
I completed the BFI Replicant test (based on the movie Blade Runner) and it told me I was 32% Replicant….I think that means I’m 32% heartless rather than 32% of me thinks quite logically unfortunately.
Curiosity and the rascal 