My definition of Androrithms

This is a key neologism in my Technology vs Humanity  book (i.e. it's a word I made up). I like to use the term in order describe what really matters for most of us: human ‘rhythms’ not machine rhythms i.e. algorithms. A super-computer can win in chess or GO but can't talk to a 2-year old. A person that I meet somewhere needs an average of 0.4 seconds to gain some kind of basic understanding about me, even without speaking – yet a computer still does not really understand my values and feelings after it has ingested my entire browsing and social network history of the past 7 years (an estimated 200 Million data points).  Just try this IBM personality insight test:)

Androrithms include human-only traits such as empathy, compassion, creativity, story-telling and soon to be relicts (?) such as mystery, serendipity, mistakes and secrets.  “Computers are stupid – they only provide answers” (Picasso)  Computers are for answers, humans are for questions (Kevin Kelly). As I like to say: for every amazing algorithm we need to strengthen our already existing androrithm.  Every technological advancement impacts on how we interact as humans, and in many future cases we will need to safeguard, hedge or kind of ‘national-parkize’ those human idiosyncrasies so that they are not diminished or even eradicated by the tendency of technology to present itself as a solution to everything. (A great example would be how people are increasingly looking towards technology to solve social challenges: political activism on Facebook (press Like rather than making sure the right people get voted), or on increasing security and digital surveillance to ‘solve’ terrorism)