Human Communication and the Convergence Agenda

This article explores trends in, and consequences of, converging technologies. According to Wikipedia, the term convergence is "commonly used in reference to the synergistic combination of voice (and telephony features), data (and productivity applications) and video onto a single network. These previously separate technologies are now able to share resources and interact with each other creating new efficiencies." The premise of Cees Hamelink's article is that converging technologies promise to open up further opportunities to expand the natural compulsion of humans to communicate. Obstacles that in the past threatened to impede communication - distance, speed, volume, reliability, and language - suddenly seem surmountable.

Hamelink goes on to explore the impact on human communication of these technologies, which we might expect "in the not too distant future". He addresses:

• Human-machine communication: "People will increasingly communicate with the assistance of machine intelligence and the machines will have ever more human features. Developments in converging technologies will produce machines with an intelligence that far exceeds human intellectual capabilities."
• Machine-machine communication - "Among the new forms of communication that humans will be exposed to is communication between intelligent nanobots in our biological systems. The introduction of machine intelligence in our biological systems implies the prospect of longevity and even immortality....The development of converging technologies might open up the possibility of communicating across the barrier of human mortality. Artificial intelligence technology is likely to make it possible that people continue their lives after death as archived personalities....With such a development a realistic expectation would be that living people can communicate with persons that have died but are electronically 'archived'."
• Telepathic communication between living and deceased people
• Cross-species communication - "It seems a realistic expectation that the further development of converging technologies will allow humans to hear sounds where they assumed only silence existed (like in the deep seas) and to produce sounds that are beneficial to other living beings."

Despite the potentials that these converging technologies may hold for connection and communication, Hamelink argues that "it is unlikely that the availability, accessibility and affordability of these emerging technologies would be globally and equitably shared." Further, he points out that, while it would be unfortunate to limit technological development, there is a "dark side to an uncritical reverence for scientific and technological development." Questions one may wish to ask while pondering the new tools associated with converging technologies include: "Can we still communicate in sense of Martin Buber’s relational communication. What happens to human communication when all ‘I-Thou’ relations are all technically mediated? We will certainly expand and upgrade our communicative transmission practices, but can we ever listen to the 'otherness' of the other in communication processes mediated by converging technologies?"