Recently I’ve noticed a trend with some of my accounts. When they’re trying to tell me something they’re increasingly using more emotive language, in an effort to get me to feel something and therefore complete a call to action. Here is an example from Dropbox:



They’re showing me a before and after sketch representation of my Dropbox and what it looks like right now, and how I can make my Dropbox no longer feel ‘lonely’ and brighten it up with some greenery and flowers by using it a bit more. I’m unconvinced as to whether making my little box of cloud in the sky ‘lonely’ is going to make me want to use it, especially since the ‘cloud’ is kind of like the files are floating around in the ether, and it doesn’t feel like something in particular has them and has emotions itself.

Of course I’ve seen it been done before, here’s a familiar image from Twitter, with a cute robot type thing that’s lost his hand. Which is for some reason a lot bigger than the other one.

I’ve also recently come across this one from yfrog. Why is he incased in ice? I have no idea.

This one genuinely made me smile, with no picture required.

Moo is a sticker printing company and I sent an order for company stickers a few months ago, and this is the response I got. It’s written from first person perspective which makes it sound like it’s a more personal email, even though I’m well aware that it’s an automatic confirmation email after confirming the purchase.

Anthropomorphic technology is an interesting concept. With the addition of the ‘talking’ computer Siri on the iPhone 4S, is Apple paving the way for the introduction of the feeling of normality when talking to your phone? We know from history that people can be easily fooled with examples such as Eliza and even automated telemarketing on the home phone can still confuse some people…Some others also prefer to talk to someone when searching for something online, such as those avatars on Ikea’s website that act a bit liked a glorified search engine and are completely automated, they just have a friendly face slapped on them. A lot of people are saying now that technology needs to be more ‘personal’ more ‘soft’ and some would even say more human. And there are exhibitions such as the current one at the Science Museum, the proving that Artificial Intelligence is becoming ever more human-like, or at least attempting to allow robots to respond to humans in a more natural way.

But where do you draw the line? Is further blurring of the line between computer and animal a welcome direction for technology to take? Or do we want to keep what’s human… human?