Startups are increasingly responsible for how we view the interent. Both visually with design and user interface tools and with behind the scenes technology that shapes our world view. Simply put when you find information online it is increasingly chosen for you by technology, not a human. That technology in a broad stroke is a bot.

A bot is a group of computer language, code, that a programmer of team of programmers have written to perform a function. It serves as an automated way performing the mundane or an interesting task that might take a person 10 days to complete if done by hand.

Daniel Suarez has tackled bots in a way that is enlightening and both fear inducing. He’s done this through his book Daemon, which made its way into my life thanks to a bot named Klau . . . I mean human filter named Rick Klau. Suarez writes about a programmer that upon his death and the subsequent posting of his obituary online that would put into motion a series of bots that cause great public harm.

The enlightening part of this is that it is something that maybe we wouldn’t have thought of. The fear inducing part of this is that much of this could really happen. But that is not what I want to talk about. I want to use it as a baseline for understanding that what shapes our lives is information. And that information is ever increasingly generated for us by bots.

There are fewer humans in that information gathering, processing and filtering stew than ever before. Blind trust is put into these bots that they are in essence an oracle. That the decisions they make are a definitive guide to the way that we process the world around us. Below is a video a video from a presentation that Suarez gave last year (If you can’t see the video click here):

The bot-mediated reality that he speaks of is now. Currently it is ubiquitous in simply forms like search engines, and as he calls it, narrow artificial intelligence. Something internet users interact with multiple times a day. And according to the Suarez they operate in the mortgage, insurance and medical industries. This is our reality.

Tech Startups find themselves having a major role in the development of bots. Often they are pushed in this direction simply as a part of innovation. Innovation is something that is based on efficiency and new ways of interacting with information. All of this in order to create a better world through experience. What Suarez has explored is a world in peril due to this innovation.

This story of bots is being written now by startups and coders around the globe. In this bot-mediated reality there it is important to put on your anthropologist hat and review the impact that developing technology has on a culture, a community. It isn’t just the insidious that we should be on the lookout for, but working to ensure that the best effort is being made to create a human-like experience.

BTW, the video of the entire presentation is the only one that I have on my iPod. I watch it often to keep myself inspired about the technologies we are developing.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Stewards Of A Bot-Mediated Reality is a post from: TechStartups.com