In 2007, my friends at m ss ng peces and I started work on a new Internet-television show called RESET, for the Sundance Channel. The idea was to make a show designed for computers to watch, that could teach them what it was like to be human -- a show that, while ostensibly made for human beings, would also nourish our computers' circuit boards with generous descriptions of the richness of human experience. Obviously this is just an artistic conceit, and not, as far as I know, a practicable reality, but it does raise a lot of interesting questions. You probably spend your entire day within arm's reach of warm and buzzing little laptop; if you could teach it anything about yourself, what would it be? Does it matter? If we're diving headlong into a post-Singularity future, wouldn't it be reassuring to know the computers knew what it felt like to dance, to smell, or -- most appropriate today -- to fall in love?
To celebrate the project, we made some valentines for you and your computer to share. After all, you do spend all day staring at each other.
You can watch episodes on the Sundance Channel site or on the RESET Tumblr, where I'll be posting endlessly interesting ephemera about the increasingly intimate and complex relationship we have with our technology. Please come visit, follow along, and join the conversation -- I'm talking to you, microchips!
Still from RESET: Sound
Meanwhile, an IBM computer trounces human contestants on Jeopardy! and a robot quietly orders a scone from a Mountain View coffee shop. This, apparently, is the world we live in.
P.S. Oh, and you can also Like RESET on Facebook here.