Assignment #6 Rachel Schoenau

In real life, we go transform from different roles that we occupy. Ackerman attributes these transformations to the flexibility of human nature. Humans are able to be professional at work by morning, a parent by afternoon, a friend by evening, and a girlfriend by night. Sometimes you can be a friend and a girlfriend, or a parent and a friend at the same time also. Ackerman attributes this quality to human ambiguity. Transforming into different roles is a social ability that humans have down pat, but technology has a tougher time making the switch.

Cell phones cannot mimic social transformations. For example, there are times when I am in class and want to be a diligent student. My phone becomes bothersome when it vibrates to alert me that a call is incoming. Although I have my phone on silent for bbm and text messages, I keep it on vibrate when I am receiving an actual phone call. My phone will vibrate and disturb me when I am paying close attention to something else. Some of my calls are important, such as a call informing me that my car is being towed, and I need to be alerted when they are incoming. In this case I would excuse myself from class and take the call. Other times I do not want to be bothered by friends asking what is for dinner, or where we want to go for spring break. These phone calls ruin my train of thought and take me out of my respective role. I wish my phone would not bother me when I receive them.

A smart phone would be able to detect which incoming phone calls are emergency related or work related and which are trivial. For the first kind, I would like to be notified through vibrations. For the latter, I would like the phone to be silent. A way for phones to screen certain calls would be to register certain contacts as work related and certain others as unimportant or social contacts. However, people or contacts do not represent importance, the subject matter of their call represents what is important or not.

This detection is difficult for a phone because it does not have the analytical ability to discern which incoming calls are work-related or not, like my brain does. This ability highlights a difference in social and technical abilities. I would like to have a phone that can tell the difference between work-related, but technology must come a long way before it can have as much insight as humans do.