There was a tree in the Sahara that stood alone for 300 years. There were no other trees for 250 miles, and for this reason the Ténéré Tree became famous, in its way. In the 30s a French ethnologist was surprised to note it had “nice green leaves, and some yellow flowers”.
This is what I thought about when I first heard news of the ChameleonMask, presented at a tech conference last week. Described as “Human Uber”, this is basically an opportunity to send a stranger to live your life so you don’t have to. They explain that the ChameleonMask, “uses a real human as a surrogate for another remote user”, by giving the driver, let’s call them a driver, “a mask-shaped display that shows a remote user’s live face, and a voice channel transmits a remote user’s voice”. It’s a guy walking round with an iPad on their face is what it is. You see through it, you talk through it, you go to your colleague’s leaving do and you go to your ex’s wedding and you go on a long walk to a lake, all without leaving your flat. It is a tool to allow us to maintain human connections while never having to get out of bed. The feedback has been shock and disgust, at the way mankind is outsourcing its most basic needs, the way we are picking away at what it means to be human. But come on, can you think of anything better?
Can you think of anything better than being alone, but never lonely? That tree had worked out exactly how to survive all by itself, growing its yellow flowers, its green leaves. Could this, this face iPad, be the answer we’ve been searching for ever since we read “Go Hard or Go Home” on someone’s T-shirt and thought, “Well, going hard sounds horrible and at home there’s half a Toblerone in the cupboard”?
There was that kerfuffle a few years ago about the Japanese boys who shut themselves into their rooms and never came out, “hikikomori”, thousands of people whose tendency towards hermitry was variously attributed to smothering mothers, absent fathers, a failing economy and the rise of video games. But today, doesn’t it just feel like common sense? If you’re lucky enough to have a room of your own, with decent wifi and comprehensive loungewear, then who would choose to leave?
Especially when the telly is good and there’s such a thing as “prestige true crime”, a genre that allows you to enjoy the most tabloid of murder stories guiltlessly, because of high production values and the directors’ insistence that they’re contributing to a political debate. Especially when you are paying three quarters of your salary for this afterthought of a home, an idea in progress but showing its workings, with rugs covering up the last tenant’s break-up. Especially when you already feel under siege from the news that crackles through your social media, the unasked-for updates on Brexit, the news of less prestigious true crimes in similar flats across town that contribute to no political debate at all, instead just making you wary of dating apps and leaving the house. Especially when the weather’s bad. Especially when you have nothing to wear. Especially when we feel maybe two tweets away from war.
So, disregarding the very “will-this-do?” nature of the prototype – honestly, it’s like when you’re not getting enough attention over lunch so hold a perfume ad in front of your face and poke your finger through the mouth and speak in a Californian accent through it to get your friend to stop looking at their phone – Human Uber comes at just the right time. Human Deliveroo would be just as efficient, I suppose, for the quick drop-in at your nephew’s birthday party where you’re required to give a present but not by any means encouraged to hang around in case you try it on with the balloon man. And Human Tinder certainly has legs – you keep swiping until you find a face that doesn’t disgust you, then tenderly remove the surrogate’s cardie. Of course, all this comes at a price – you are paying an anonymous human to play out your dreams of human connection. But Human Uber answers an immediate need – the need to be alone, while also missing nothing.
Because, of course, the truth of our generation’s biggest ailment – Fomo [fear of missing out] – is that we crave experience and genuine emotion, but deny ourselves it daily because a) authenticity is never as good as it looks online, b) we might fail, and c) it’s cold out. Here is the chance to go to dinner but blame bad reception when your joke falls flat. The opportunity to just Knightmare a stranger around a party until you see someone you haven’t offended, or to get close to someone without the fear they’ll smell the sadness of lunch on your breath.
The Ténéré Tree grew on, alone, until in 1973 a man driving drunk through the desert crashed into it. Which makes me think that despite the sinister undertones of tech that enables everything, at a price, the real danger comes not with Human Uber but with human connection itself. Especially when it’s pissed.
One more thing
With Rita, Sue and Bob Too on my mind I watched The Arbor, Clio Barnard’s film about its author, the late Andrea Dunbar. Bloody hell it’s painful, but bloody hell it’s brilliant, with the voices of those who were there lip-synched by actors. It holds you at a distance, making you wish all difficult real-life stories could be performed at one remove.
The New York Times profiled with great admiration the owner of a warehouse in Woolwich that contains his archive of 160,000 magazines. And I intend to wield this clipping the next time my mum threatens to burn my piles of NMEs and The Face that sit in her attic.
‘The modern antisemite is more subtle than his great-grandparents,’ said Howard Jacobson in his Holocaust Memorial Day lecture. ‘He doesn’t smash our windows or our bones. He insinuates himself into consciences that are already troubled and works on spirits that are already half-broken.’ Applause.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
