The Unity Machine

A while back I wrote about an idea for a machine that could be used to bring the world together. I lost that post, so here’s the idea again.

[ Edit: I found my first post! I had named it "The Unity Machine", just like this one. So this second one came up as "the-unity-machine-2", which gave it away. So here's the link: >> The Unity Machine ]

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I’m thinking of a computer network in the future that will have the ability to immerse ourselves in the experiences of others. This isn’t a new concept; in many ways it’s the foundation of gaming, but such a system could be used to do much more than pretend to be someone you want to be.

An interesting application of advanced HCI and networking that eliminated the notion of “remote” would be to ask that people experience the lives of others throughout the world, as a duty of citizenship.

So the goal of the project is simple: reduce the distinction between “us” and “them” and “me” and “you”. In other words, the machine would merge our interests in terms of common goals. It would make it so that hurting others equated to hurting yourself, and allowing others to be hurt would cause you pain as well.

So just as some countries have mandatory military service, this civilization would have mandatory “Unity Time”. It’d be every month or so for relatively short amounts of time, and you’d basically enter into an interface and await an assignment. The assignment would be a random event/experience from around the world — some positive, but mostly negative.

As an example, a rich girl from Pleasanton might sign in to her Unity Time and be sent over to Palestine to experience the death of a loved one due to war. Or she might be sent to a wedding in an African village. The key is that her heart rate would rise, she’d feel the emotions, she’d essentially experience the life-changing events that many have when traveling, only more intensely and without the travel.

So the next time she ran into someone from Uganda, for example, she might say, “Wow, I got to learn how to make one of those quilts you guys make. Those are really cool.” They would have shared something. And at her upscale private school there wouldn’t be so much disconnection with the world.

When the teacher said, “50 died today in Pakistan.”, many in the classroom would feel genuine anguish. At least a few of the people in the class may have spent some Unity Time in Pakistan recently. It would be on heavy rotation from the assignment algorithm if there were more people experiencing pain there recently.

And yes, I’m aware of the issues – some of which are very scary. Like who would decide who goes where? Couldn’t you hack the interface so that you didn’t experience pain? Could the assignment oversight committee be bought so that those with money got the good experiences and none of the bad ones?

All good points, but still…it’s an interesting idea. We need some way of conveying to people that we are all in this thing together.: