Integrations

Last week I reviewed the 1987 film "Robocop" about a futuristic policeman augmented with super-human abilities. When we think of human augmentation we often think of someone like the Robocop, a normal person with physical attachments and implants that allow them to do and see things others can't. In media and gaming the idea is ubiquitous: think The Borg, Iron Man and Master Chief as examples. However, the truth about human augmentation is actually a lot simpler, so simple that we rarely think about just how connected we are at all times, even without eye implants and rocket boots. 

It's mentioned (far to often) that people are addicted to their devices. Sure there's truth to that, but it was a cliche to say so more than a decade ago, now it's just getting annoying. It's like saying we're addicted to food, money or water. This is why I prefer to think of technological augmentation not as a physical attachment, but as a series of integrations.

Some kind of bubble cafe

In technical terms, an integration is any way two or more systems interact with each other. You add a bit of HTML and JavaScript code to your webpage to pull anything from the weather, stock market quotes or sports scores onto your site; now your application is integrated with Accuweather, Bloomberg and ESPN. Your work's payroll system is integrated with its customer relationship management system and it's qualitative reporting systems, so all the information each wing of the organization is seeing is synchronized and updated in real time. This allows everyone access to all the information they need immediately, and drastically reduces the need for clerks, couriers, typists etc. An old colleague of mine said it best: "integration is when the computers talk to each other, so we don't have to."   

We don't have physical brain-plugs, like in the Matrix, or infrared vision, like in Robocop, but our eyes, ears, voice and fingers are the perfect ports from which to send and receive an ever-increasing amount of information. Some readers may remember a time when you had to literally write a check then balance your checkbook by hand after each purchase to know how much money you had at a given point in time. If the calculation was off, or you skipped a few calculations and couldn't find the receipts, the only way to know was to go to your physical bank branch and ask them for the available balance in your account, or wait until a statement was mailed to you. If you had stocks, equities, high-yield savings bonds, etc. you could forget about calculating the value yourself. You could either wait for your monthly or quarterly statements to arrive, or hire a professional to keep an eye on your finances for you. Now, all of our financial information is available to us where ever we go. With the click of an app, you can look across multiple accounts, see interest accrue and stock values go up and down in real time. You can transfer money from one bank to another, sell stocks, and re-pay a friend for dinner from your phone in less than the time it used to take to wait in line at the bank to deposit a check. You are now integrated with your entire financial universe at all times. What used to take one or more days of errands, and interactions with multiple tellers, associates and clerks, is now fully accessible to you at a moment's notice.

It doesn't end there either. My credit card is integrated with my ride share app. My airline app is integrated with my federal known traveler identification, and it's all integrated into my brain via my eyes, ears and finger-tips. I can now wake up, get dressed, make a car come pick me up, book a flight to nearly anywhere in the world, walk through TSA Pre-Check and takeoff -all without ever reaching for my wallet or carrying a single dollar of cash. The only thing I'd need to remember to take is my passport, and the only time I'd truly need to speak with another person is if I make the alarm go off at airport security. Not even Robocop, with his sophisticated mechanical implants could manage that, and it would be significantly harder for him to get through that metal detector. 

Human augmentation is happening, and it's happening faster than ever. We adopt it without a thought, let alone hesitation, because it makes sense, and it makes our lives easier. Best of all, unlike a robo-suit, eye implants or a neural brain-plug, we can turn our devices off and put them down whenever we'd like. Plus, a phone and a set of wireless headphones probably don't hurt as much as a brain-plug. But, put me on the wait list for a set of Iron Man rocket boots.