This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 6, 2021 - December 12, 2021

I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high over vales and hills, wondering if I were human or in fact a digital twin, separated from source. Or perhaps I was a hologram projected from one of those super sophisticated machines that look like something a magician would step into and disappear (coming to a living room near you any day now).

This paranoia may be the fallout of writing and editing deep tech stories for a year now, coupled with an early diet of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and of course, Elizabeth Wurtzel. Throw in that sense of isolation and alienation common to anyone who has lived through this pandemic with five cats and Netflix, and you have a very absurd and illogical (not to mention troubled) individual.

It was an existential question (as in, do I actually exist or am I a figment of someone’s bad programming in a holographic universe) and I enjoyed playing with the thought as I unsheathed my fountain pen to write out my long list of (physical) Christmas cards because I would have to post them fairly soon if they were to get to their destinations in time. Actually, I should have posted them last month (if not, last year) but what can’t be cured, must be endured.

As I blotted the cards with my faulty pen, I felt less digital and more organic, which was a slight comfort.

The thing is, I have been coming across more and more of what I label as “digital humans” for some time now. And I have met a few who are further along the path than others. Poetry is not for them.  And art is a matter of NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

There was this guy, for instance, a self-proclaimed quantified human, who weighed his poop every day and entered it into a little notebook, or perhaps a bullet journal or more likely an Excel spreadsheet, along with other little measurements on a daily or perhaps more than daily basis.

Why? I asked, quite mystified.

Why not? He answered, equally mystified. How could I question the vital importance of data? Any data, for that matter. Data is the new gold. Data is the thing. We all need data.

Ergo, we should all wear trackers on our wrists and weigh our daily excretions, if only to have the data when we meet with our digital physicians, possibly online. Maybe even in person. Or perhaps, technology permitting, in hologram mode.

There’s data, and then there’s data, I answered, getting myself caught up in the tangles of my illogical, stubbornly analogue-ish mind.

Let’s agree to disagree, he rejoined serenely. And so, we talked about Internet of Things (which was why I was there in the first place) and dropped the subject.

As time went by though, I noticed more of these digital humans or organic robots popping up. They spoke in (to me) incomprehensible abbreviations, had about 20 windows up on their screens at any one time, were easily bored (everything had to be brighter and more colourful), and automated everything but their bodily functions — and then complained about not being able to automate those bodily functions.

Also, their lives served merely as backdrops for posts, pictures and videos on the social media-du-jour. And everything, down to the meals in front of them, was “content” to be photographed at just the right angle, with the right lighting using the perfect phone.

And I wondered: Was this a good thing? A bad thing? Or perhaps, something in between? Possibly those who automate their lives are neater. More coherent and put together.

Possibly they could pull their energy away from all those niggling little tasks that beset the days of those of us who are less organised, and even more probably, they don’t exist in the centre of chaos, their floors strewn with the detritus of cat toys and correspondence and books in various stages of being read.

But what other aspects of their humanity were they giving up through automation? Sometimes, the mess is the point.

Remember how, in the times of your grandparents (or possibly great grandparents), when you visited someone, you had to spend the first 30 minutes asking after family and talking about nothing in particular because coming to the point of your visit straight off would be considered ill-bred? It was not about compacting your message into the least number of words in the shortest space of time possible; it was about building relationships.

As this whole experience does not make sense from a logical perspective there would be no way to digitalise it. The AI would privilege saving time and creating more efficiency.

I wondered how much of our creativity was directly linked to the messy absurdity of our lives.  And by creativity, I mean real creativity — art, music, poetry — the stuff Robin Williams was talking about in Dead Poet’s Society when he said:

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

Creativity, and not its digital counterpart, “innovation”. What is the difference? One can be art for art’s sake. The other needs to be art for a purpose (most probably commercial).

Which was better? What resulted in the most desirable human traits, and what, in fact, were those?

I stroked a hologram of a former pet, and watched yet another episode of Hwarang (Squid Game being too nihilistic for my taste) and gave up trying to figure things out. I would leave it to my digital twin who had started out being an exact copy, but with numerous software upgrades had come to be more efficient, logical and coherent.

She was there to do the hard work, while I lost myself in K-pop stars turned actors on Netflix and a slice of chocolate butterscotch cake, mouth open, drooling slightly, unable to tackle anything tougher than (eye, brain and actual) candy for today. And perhaps, tomorrow.

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