How Transhumanist Tech Will Correct Reality's Typos

It's commonplace while reading to have one's concentration disrupted by a spelling error or typo. Sometimes that disruption causes us to discredit the material we're reading—as well as its author. The same thing occurs when we are listening to a political speech on TV and a politician mispronounces a word. This often makes us cringe and question the politician's intelligence. A simple error in spelling and pronunciation has come to sometimes significantly influence our interpretations of people and the content they dish out. I liken this behavior to the "judging of a book by its cover" syndrome.

It's probably not healthy or practical for anyone to be so hyper-judgmental over small mistakes or imperfections they encounter in people and in life. However, many of us are. So the question is: Are there ways around such annoying disruptions—and the thousands of other "reality typos" that we encounter daily?

Other than meditating in the Lotus position for hours on end to blank one's mind out, I believe the answer is yes. In the future, radical new technology will be able to eliminate or fix the idiosyncrasies—good or bad—built into the reality our mind knows.

Already we live in a world where some errors of written and spoken language can be corrected on the spot. Some media websites and ereaders have built-in auto-correction software. But in about 10 years time, the future will be much more corrective. Eventually, audio and television broadcasts will have methods to "on demand" fix a speaker's mispronunciations as they come across the airwaves. A software program will be able to accurately emulate the voice of the speaker, and fix any poorly pronounced words, titles, and names instantly.

More importantly, it might even be able to correct misspoken facts or politically incorrect one-liners in "real time." Surely the Republican party would love to have avoided Senate nominee Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" comment, for example. A real time editor would've have come in handy to avoid the ridicule of the press.

But I think real time corrections in reality will go far further than that. First, content will be manipulated by the creators and devices they come through. Then content will be filtered through the devices the readers and audience have installed inside themselves. I'm guessing people will have built-in tech chips and sensors that translate everything for perfection and maximum understanding in themselves, so that the outside world doesn't need to be correct, only their own perspectives need to be.

Such technology could be made possible by coming cranial implant technology, which will—via electroencephalography (EEG) technology and the hybrid thinking concept proposed by inventor Ray Kurzweil—help us process information. Additionally, it's likely that more and more people will be spending time in virtual environments with devices like the Oculus Rift, which Facebook now owns. Eventually, VR will overtake television and people will spend hours a day cognitively immersed in all-digital environments. Additionally, augmenting our realities with Microsoft's HoloLens will be another common way to experience the world. And in two decades time, much of these virtual realities will also be available through bionic eyes, which I think will come to replace less advanced biological eyes.

All this technology will affect our perception of reality and dramatically change the way we feel about the world, as well as our personal preferences. Why come home to a dirty house when you can virtually augment a clean one in your mind by erasing it with your cranial implant? Why see trash on the street if you don't need to? Why have a neighbor run a noisy lawnmower when you're enjoying a movie? Tune it out with your cochlear implant. Why start a fire in the wood stove if you can just imagine it in your mind and also feel the warmth? Why read a book full of typos or factual errors when your technology can correct them on the page (even if the author doesn't want that)?

A few years ago, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Philip Roth tried to point out something about his novel, The Human Stain, on its Wikipedia page. To Roth's surprise, the public disagreed and corrected him. Roth was told he was not a credible enough source to comment on his own book.

Roth's experience is a sign of things to come. In the future, individual personal objectification will trump reality through the ever growing use of technology, even over the creators of content themselves.

Perhaps even more interesting is how such technology will create utopia-like realities for us in our daily worlds. Built-in algorithms will know our personalities and deepest desires, in the same way Google already knows our search preferences. Why should our lovers ever have bed head, or bad breath, or pimples, or even wrinkles? Will our cranial implants make our pets always appear groomed? Will everyone's shirts and skirts always be perfectly ironed? And what about body odor—can we virtually get rid of it once and for all by programming our minds not to smell it? Furthermore, can we add a permanent body odor of a preferred perfume or cologne on someone and ourselves? The tech will be here one day to allow us to do all this.

Such a distorted reality of our experience in the universe is not only possible, but probably inevitable. Software programs will simply know our tastes and desires, and implement them routinely in our daily lives, probably to whatever makes us happiest and most satisfied.

Of course, its impact will be limited. It won't be able to get us out of traffic in our driverless cars when we're late for a flight at the airport. Nor will it be able to remove the toy we just tripped on that the kids left around, but that our VR removed from our view so the house looked clean. Nor will it be able to eliminate cancer from our bodies, even if our implants and bionic eyes makes us look and feel like we're perfectly healthy.

The dangers of such technology creating on-demand imperfection may leave us hollow and unprepared for reality, especially when material existence catches up with us—as it often does when poor health, economic trouble, or tragedy strikes. It may turn out our idiosyncrasies and anal retentive propensities are preoccupations that can be replaced at times, but not without leaving us exposed to a waiting, harsh real world.