Connections between Politicians, Morality, Happiness, and General Efficiency

In the first two dialogues that take place in Plato’s Gorgias, questions are raised about what role an orator plays, followed by questions about the responsibilities and morality of those in power, the orator, whether it is greater to be wronged against or cause wrong, and whether orators are responsible when a student or listener is lead astray by them.

I found the dialogue with Polus particularly interesting, particularly Socrates’ idea that the wrongdoer is more miserable than the wronged, especially if the wrongdoer is never punished. It pretty much took the entire length of Polus’s section of the dialogue to understand what the blazes Socrates was thinking with his premise, but I do agree that, in an odd way, there is some sense to it. While I am not an active wrongdoer myself (or at least, I certainly hope not), I can understand what Socrates means by the prolonged stress of avoiding punishment may be worse than the punishment itself. The parallel I face is more along the lines of the many times when I’ve avoided doing something out of fear or laziness (say homework, or calling someone), but when I finally got around to doing it, it turns out the fear or stress I put myself through was far worse than the thing I was avoiding. That seems to be the crux of Socrates’ argument for how a wrongdoer will suffer more than the wronged, for at least the wronged is also just in his suffering. I do question Socrates’ argument in the sense that it ignores the possibility of sociopaths who may truly have no knowledge or caring of the fact that they are doing anything wrong, but for the most part, I actually can see where he/Plato comes from.

Now to keep with my blog’s current theme of tying in rhetoric of the past with current politics:

Today’s equivalent of the orators of the past seem to be primarily advertisers and politicians. In the first dialogue with Gorgias, Socrates and Gorgias agree that the target audience for orators are largely the masses, rather than a specialist audience. And like the orators of the past, the primary aim of the two mentioned groups, politicians and advertisers, is to persuade, whether the point of persuasion is exactly “right” or not.

However, a similar problem exists in both of these fields: people are largely not held accountable for untruths or wrongs that are spread to the masses. That is not to say that they are without responsibility – advertised products do have to meet at least certain safety standards, and if caught, politicians have to deal with scandals and possibly eventually having to step out of office. But often it seems that the more powerful the party, the less likely they are to face the same consequence as if a non-powerful person committed the same crime.

Now to focus primarily on the politician, because that seems to be the closer parallel to the orator of the past: In U.S. politics today, it is difficult to be successful in politics without lying at least a little. One of the problems with the two party system as it exists today is that the box for each party is growing tighter and tighter as it seems people grow less likely to accept compromise. The problem is that people don’t generally think in exact boxes, but to get elected and to be successful, a politician has to pretend that they do. Between that and the obsession of staying elected, that seems to count for some of the epic flip-flops that made from government officials.

There is also the matter of happiness of the people. While the role of congressmen and senators and the like is to act as a mouthpiece for the will of the people, the happiness rate with the government seems to imply other things. A gallup poll conducted in early 2014 rates the approval of congress at 13%.  This is actually an improvement over an all-time low of 9% in November 2013, a month after the government shutdown. But the point is, with happiness ratings so low, a non-sociopathic politician would feel that the people are being wronged by their actions.

However, politicians are barely held accountable for this. Scandals are rather common among government officials, but upon being caught the punishment usually ranges from a few days/weeks of annoying media coverage to maybe actually having to step down from office, but rarely criminal charges. As for the general efficiency of our current government and the people who are being harmed by it, many people have accepted bickering, gridlock, ignorance, and nothing useful being accomplished as “business as usual” in Washington D.C.

Here lies the scenario I’m clumsily trying to lay out:

A) U.S. Politicians are vaguely attempting to function in a broken system.
B) Because the system is broken, very little that is good gets accomplished.
C) A non-ignorant, non-sociopathic politician (though I will accept that it is debatable if one exists) would realize that the people they were sent to represent are being wronged by the lack of good coming from them.
D) A politician may be miserable because of this, also assuming that they haven’t --
E) somehow gone mad with power somewhere, and are doing any activities that they would like to avoid finding out, which adds additional stress/shame/misery.
F) Misery brings the morale at the center of operations to a low, which leads to --
G) Nothing being done, and the cycle continuing forever. 

In conclusion, using Socrates’ argument I can make this argument for accountability of politicians in Washington D.C. Not only is it generally a good idea to keep an eye on people who sort of have power over us, but also for the sake of creating a not-completely-miserable work environment so that maybe something can get done.

My questions:

1) In terms of the tyrant especially, do you think that Socrates is right when he says that the wrongdoer is more miserable than the wronged? Why or why not?

2)Socrates says that the orator is a sort of pandering, a false equivalent to truth and righteousness, like how cookery can be a poor replacement for medicine, or beauty-culture a poor replacement for physical training (32-33). If the politician is the modern day equivalent to the orator of the past, what would be the modern-day, better alternative (in Plato's mind) to the politician? Would it still be justice, or something else?

The Effects of Early Sophism on Modern Democracy

Upon reading Harold Barrett’s The Sophists, I can definitely see how the rise of the Sophists and the birth of Western democracy are very likely closely related. I don’t know if we ever received an answer to our chicken-and-egg question of which came first (though it was implied that democracy did come first, or so it sounded like from the reading), but I can see how the mentality that the Sophists had can be related to the rise of the first democracies, and even how some of these ideas can still be seen today in modern democracies.

So I guess I’ll go on a bit here about the Sophists we read about, and how what they’re remembered for relates to modern politics/democracy:

First of all, Protagoras. One of his revolutionary ideas that apparently excited and inspired his students was that “on every argument there are two sides” (10). I admit, upon reading that part I was stunned for a moment that such a seemingly obvious idea could ever be seen as revolutionary. But it seems that arguments before had a stricter binary of right and wrong, as opposed to Protagoras’s idea that an argument is where “the ‘truth’ of one side will be tested by the ‘truth’ of the other” (10). Truth was suddenly no longer seen as iron-solid, but something that could be shaken by the truth of another. Such is today’s debates – no matter how many people will try to tell you otherwise, there isn’t really a clear-cut “right” party and “wrong” party in politics, but two parties pitting their truths against each other, with the voters left to decide which truth is the most sensible (or the least twisted, as the case may be).

Which leads to Protagoras’s other idea of “man is the measure of all things.” Like many during Protagoras’s time, I find his idea a bit of a struggle to understand – if I saw a tree in the distance that I mistook for a man, would that mean the tree was temporarily a man? Finer points aside though, the idea seems to bring about an idea of personal responsibility that is a necessity for democracy – the voter of today needs to use his personal senses to understand the reality that surrounds him, and try to figure out what people/solutions are best for dealing with that reality.

Gorgias, meanwhile, brought about style to rhetoric – not merely talking at people to persuade them, but using various appeals to win them to your side. In particular, mixing pathos with logos and ethos, the skillful use of emotion in debate. Even simply turning a speech into a work of artistry, using the balance of words and phrases, or invoking listener response to his pieces (for they seemed to be considered practically art in his time.) Certainly, we see this today, not just in political speeches that can invoke anything from stirring appeals of emotion to catchy, chantable phrases (yes we can), but really in any form of persuasion such as advertising.

Prodicus seemed to be a strong advocate for semantics, being able to invoke precise meanings of words, for Aristotle said he attempted to “assign to every term its own peculiar significance.” In today’s politics, we see the parallel with our obsession with every phrase within a speech, especially when an opponent or the media can get that one soundbite – in or out of context – that can make or destroy the original argument. I can’t think of any examples of the top of my head, but I’m sure there are examples too of a single word being up for questioning of “when he said it, did he mean this or that?”

Hippias – well, he just sounds like a hoot for one thing, with his pride in all of his handmade clothes and whatnot. But besides his love of variety and accumulating a wide array of skills and knowledge, it was apparently his memory that made him stand out, and his work on developing his students mnemonics and methods of retaining information. This is a trait less seen in modern society, in the era of teleprompters, notecards, and hastily scrawling things on the back of your hand. But there is sometimes a certain derision for politicians, particularly Obama in the recent years, who do rely on teleprompters in order to perform their speeches, no matter how fantastic. There seems to be this idea, at least within certain portions of the media, that if a speech isn’t memorized then it isn’t truly “from the heart,” but rather simply an orchestrated, possibly deceitful, argument that exists purely for winning support and no other reason (which admittedly is the reason of existence behind most/all arguments, but the idea is that the argument isn’t “from the heart” or worthy of memory seems to give a more cynical origin. Supposedly. The point is, that perhaps some of the media implies that it might be a good idea for modern politicians to take note of some of the mnemonics of old, to perhaps protect themselves from (some) cynical analysis.

Finally, Thrasymachus. Like Gorgias, Thrasymachus seemed to focus on the art of delivery, particularly in the rhythm of the delivery of his rhetoric. As noted earlier, we see this in today’s rhetoric not only in helping to create emotional or catchy appeals, but also just to help captivate an audience’s attention.

There is also the originally controversial idea that many of the Sophists shared, that law is a social construct, rather than natural rules from human nature itself that all of man feel compelled to obey.  The rise of this idea I would say is crucial for stressing the necessity of democracy, especially as we see it today. If law were truly only from human nature, then there would be no need to change them, and to do so would be purely madness. Unfortunately, we still see some who say changing the laws of old (the original constitution for example) would be madness. But as society changes, so too must certain laws as they grow quaint and outdated.

Thus, early Sophism laid much of the groundwork for early democracy, not only presenting the ideas of why democracy is necessary (how laws are a human construct, and how truth and reality can vary by person), but also some of the rhetorical strategies necessary to have debates and convince others that change is necessary. 

Finally, I guess I'll end with my two questions for the class (mainly so I can remember them for tomorrow, haha):

1. Going off of what I said about Hippias, do you think it is necessary to restore memory to current speeches and debates? On one hand, modern politicians have a lot to do and think about during campaign season especially, and I can see how trying to memorize every speech and debate strategy could be a hassle, and no one wants to be stuck on stage when you've forgotten what you want to say. On the other, it seems like modern media is trying to implement a narrative that a politician loses ethos when relying on outside sources (notecards, teleprompters, etc.). Should memorization be included again in modern rhetoric, or is the possible consequences of not memorizing easy enough to ignore?

2. There is still a pervasive idea in society that some laws are simply not meant to be touched (popular examples of today being the 2nd amendment in the constitution, and the idea of "traditional marriage" being disrupted by allowing homosexuals to marry). Do you believe that there is such a thing as an untouchable law, that is perfect the way it is? What is it, and why? 

Blog 10: Presentation Thoughts

There were a lot of really cool, funny, and intriguing ideas that stemmed from our final presentations, but one of the ones that caught my attention and I feel was really interesting in its way of remixing ideas from the first and second half of the semester was John Notturno's Bioshock Audio Diary Remix

For a refresher, you can listen to it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0ei-GA3qwI 

First of all -- it's just a really, freaking, cool audio track. I haven't played Bioshock myself, so I have absolutely no idea what the actual context of any of the clips are, but I thought the way they were remixed together along with the music was very powerful. 

However, the reason I bring it up here is that I also thought it was an interesting remix and representation of some of the themes we've been talking about this semester.

First of all, obviously it's relevant to our discussions about remixing. Again, without knowing the context of the clips, it's hard to comment for sure about how different the order of these clips are compared to the context of the game, but as a remix I'm guessing he has changed the order or at least the timing that these clips appear in the game. Through the pace and order of the clips, as well as the music chosen to back them up, he has likely created a new or at least different meaning to these clips in his remix. Now in the eyes of most, this remix would be seen as illegal to really distribute, since it's entirely created using the material of another. According to some of the other authors we have seen, such as Letham, the remixers featured in "Copyright Criminals," and possibly Lessig, because the meaning of the original content is being shown in a new way, John's remix is an entirely new piece that can be distributed. So in this sense, the video brings up that constant argument of what can be remixed and shared.

It is also reminiscent of some of our other early themes, mainly our discussions regarding copyright communists, copyright liberals, copyright conservatives, and copyright libertarians. From the different voices we hear in the audio track, we get an idea of what some of these classes would sound like. One common theme referred to "parasites," something not unlike how copyright conservatives and copyright libertarians might refer to those in the remix culture. If someone is more worried about the original artist receiving profit than creative rights, then it is easy to see remixers as parasites -- lower lifeforms who lack in creativity, who look for a quick and easy way to leech off of someone else's work to make a few bucks. Meanwhile the copyright liberals and conservatives are more concerned about creativity than the market, in creating "a new kind of beauty" and feel that the market can survive strain.

John mentioned that Stiglitz's as another inspiration for his work, and I can see how it can be tied in. Stiglitz's article can relate to what I just spoke of about copyright conservatives/libertarians particularly. In the first section of the class, we discussed what these various classes of copyright enthusiasts/naysayers would think, but Stiglitz's article details how the information economy works, and lends some insight to why copyright conservatives and libertarians might think how they think. As Stiglitz says, "The fact that markets with imperfect information do not work perfectly provides a rationale for potential government actions." Remixes are very hard to understand and track in the current economy, as we have seen in large during the first half of the semester, and with Stiglitz's article it does make some sense how some of these copyright classes could see remixing and looser copyright standards as potentially being a threat to the market. 

Overall, the reason why John's project stood out to me is that not only does it consider how information is distributed in our current digital culture, but it also speaks of, even if it's not in exactly his own words, some of the mindsets that exist today towards copyright and information sharing, and how this could lead to certain and extreme social and political consequences. 

Blog 9: Information Operations -- Kind of Remind me of Politics

I think the first thing that struck me as I was reading Captain Flor's work, and later General Baker's, is how similar an information operation seems to a political campaign or a long-term advertising campaign. All three seem to involve using certain information to create a certain image or narrative that is completely unshakable, or at least quick to fix when opposing information appears, true or untrue, that tries to shake that image. 

The second thing that struck me is that's kind of creepy, how politics and information operations are similar to a long-term advertising campaign. After all, politics and military campaigns aren't as harmless as "no really, Crest is the best brand of toothpaste," the effects that military and politics have are much more crucial.

I found some of Flor's points especially odd. The very first point about how information operations should operate is that "Credibility is the currency of counterinsurgency:  'The truth is an asset, not a liability,'" then detailing the importance of keeping an information operation campaign honest and credible.  But then, his very next point is "Establish an overarching narrative: 'Stay on message.'" I feel when all information has to conform to a certain narrative, especially with something as complicated as military operations, it would damn near impossible to keep all reports entirely truthful, and you definitely wouldn't be able to tell everything.

I feel like these two points highlight the age difference between these two men, mentioned in our prompt: that Flor was closer to a college student's age when he wrote his article, while Baker was much older. I feel like Baker has no such naivety about creating honesty within a set narrative, for a key point between Baker's and Flor's articles is that Baker has no such section on honesty, though he has many other sections on how information campaigns should work: the importance of repetition of information, keeping to a set message, unity of that message, spending a large amount of time delivering the information, and setting up feedback mechanisms. I feel like Baker is aware enough on how these campaigns actually end up working out that he knows honesty can't always occur when keeping to a set message. 

I suppose I find their ideas of a repetitive, long-lasting narrative a bit disturbing. If the narrative is actually true, stays true, and helps create relations between foreign countries and the U.S., then sure, no problem. But when I think of established narratives, I think of extreme leftwing or rightwing politicians, of the mainstream media which targets the news to a certain audience, or fundamentalist religions -- everything that fits the narrative is heard, points that could change or argue against the narrative are swept under the rug. And especially in politics, avoiding debate or change is why nothing gets accomplished rather than pointless bickering between the two parties. It keeps the targeted audience ignorant too, of what is really going on.

I also think of our discussion regarding Bradley Manning, the information he leaked, and how he was treated afterwards. The video could have been treated as the beginning of a much needed discussion about many important issues, a discussion that everyone could know about and be involved with, rather than, at best, a taboo subject discussed in hushed tones by higher military officials. Instead, because it went outside the established narrative and was seen as harmful information, Manning was tried and convicted as a criminal. 

I guess I can see how, especially when operating in foreign and potentially hostile countries where untruths could be quickly spread by counterinsurgencies, establishing a constant, positive narrative is a good thing. I just worry about the potential for the truth to be changed, hidden, or silenced with the efforts to maintain a consistent narrative. 

Blog 8: We are the Machine. The Machine is Us

I admit I felt rather inspired by Molly's blog for this week, as I am also taking DTC 475 and have also been mulling over the similarities between the class materials. I also felt inspired by one of the videos we watched on Monday, The Machine is Us/ing Us, largely because while we've talked in class about how machines are like humans or are becoming like humans, we haven't talked so much about how humans are becoming like our machines.  

So in The Shallows, one of our DTC 475 readings, Carr talks about how information technologies mentally change us. Even as far back as the invention of writing itself our minds changed, we no longer needed to remember the massive amounts of information that an oral culture needed to -- it was just no longer necessary (Carr 56-57). Later, with the invention of the typewriter, we see how writers were affected by it, Carr offers a quote from T.S. Elliot who said that his writing changed from long fluid sentences to sentences that were short and staccato (Carr 209). 

We have continued to see this with the rise of the digital age. The main point behind The Shallows is to detail how the human brain has changed due to the internet, how we have lost some of capacity to think deeply, and instead have shifted to a brain more oriented to the multi-tasking many of us are used to on the internet, such as working with multiple tabs or programs.

I think part of the reason why the internet has seemed to especially take people by storm is just how immersive it is. As we discussed a little bit on Monday, advanced programming has made it so that the average user doesn't have to deal with code in order to post information, it seems to flow almost instantaneously. Typing a blog post for the world to see takes less time, effort, and money than, say, sending a telegraph.

An idea I was toying with for the midterm though, is the idea of will information technologies become even more immersive, to the point where posting information could be almost literally as fluid as thought? Will we reach a point where humans and information technologies are not separate entities, but almost combined into one? Perhaps you only need to think to post content? Or perhaps mouse control works by a device that tracks your eye paths? I decided against the idea for my midterm project since I don't see this happening in eight years, but it's something I could see something like it happening maybe even as soon as fifteen years. It would be interesting, as it would quite revolutionize how we currently consider our relationship with technology.  

What would this idea mean in regards to information though? In my midterm I talked about a defining moment where we need to decide how we handle information -- a technology like what I speak of might help provoke that moment, if it hasn't already happened. I say that because I think those technologies may increase our current problems of not knowing how to deal with the amount of information sharing and reproduction, if the problem hasn't already been solved by then. Such a fluid technology might make it even more difficult to control what users can and cannot access, and browsing and posting remixed information would ideally grow even easier. Perhaps it would be the final straw for current copyright holders, to either attempt to put a stop to the ease of accessing/reproducing information, or else to give up and let information remixers do what they want to a certain degree.  

Overall, it seems that information technologies are growing ever more immersive. It will be interesting to see what this immersion will cause us to reconsider -- whether it be psychology, copyright, or information itself. 

Blog 7: Information Technologies and the Deparment of Redundancy Department

(The actual image is a bit bigger. If you're having trouble seeing the image, here's the image link)

This image illustrates a connection between various information technologies that we have looked at: that redundancy in information given is incredibly important. The more information given, the better!

It's interesting because in everyday life, such as in writing and in speech, redundancy is not considered a good thing. We are encouraged to not beat around the bush and just to get to the point. Language that repeats a single point over and over again, or a point that is obvious is not considered impressive or interesting by any stretch of the mind. For example, if I wrote a story with this as an excerpt: "it was raining outside. I decided to take a walk in the rain. The rain got my hair wet. I almost slipped on the freshly rained-on concrete," the reader would probably want to throw something in frustration. The reader understood the information the first time, and it is neither useful nor interesting to repeat it over and over again.

In information technology though, redundancy is actually valuable. Repetition of information helps catch or prevent errors or miscommunications from occurring. We can see throughout history how redundancy in information can prevent errors and miscommunications.

For example, Gleick describes redundancy in the language of the talking drum as "the antidote to confusion" (25). Because certain patterns of tones could mean more than one word, adding additional information was a necessity to make sure that the correct message got across. While listening to the talking drum would be more time consuming than anyone would want a normal conversation to be, redundancy eliminated the potential for errors.

We also see Gleick detail how a lack of redundancy in abbreviated telegraph messages made them vulnerable to error. As Gleick says, "because they lacked the natural redundancy of English prose--even the foreshortened prose of telegraphese--these cleverly encoded messages could be disrupted by a mistake in a single character" (158). While the coded messages were economically friendly by reducing information to only the necessary, if hidden, core, these messages were prone to errors that couldn't be noticed without natural redundancy of language -- and in the case of the wool dealer Frank Primrose, even a single error turned out to be incredibly costly.

We also see the importance of redundancy in current digital information technologies. In one of the videos we watched, Claude Shannon - Father of the Information Age, we are told how Claude Shannon integrated redundancy to digital information -- by adding extra digital bits of information and various error detection and correction codes to any sort of digital medium, then the information can still come clearly through, even if part of the data is faulty or corrupted. (In the video, the bit on redundancy starts at about 15:03, or about there.)

While redundancy in conversation may make you want to strangle someone, it's hard to overvalue the worth redundancy of information has to information technologies throughout history. To bring it all back to the image I posted, when it comes to redundancy and information technologies, there's never too much of a good thing! With information technologies, it may be possible to say that there is really no such thing as Too Much Information.

Blog 6: ELIZA, Meaning, and the future of Psychotherapy

So both in this class and in my DTC 475 class, we have talked a bit about ELIZA, the 1966 chat bot and computer program modeled after the general idea of a Rogerian Psychotherapist. Despite that the program is very limited in its responses, and the fact that many of us today would struggle to talk to ELIZA without wanting to flip a table, at the time many people took the program seriously. There were many people who believed that ELIZA could understand them, and people would have long and intimate conversations with the program.

I believe this relates to our discussions about if computers can comprehend meaning. At the time of ELIZA, the program certainly couldn't comprehend meaning, but only guess and parrot responses based on what you said to it. Often these responses made absolutely no sense to the information you just fed it. However, while the computer itself doesn't comprehend meaning, the people who interact with the computer can create meaning from the information given, and even acknowledge meaning where it doesn't exist. As of today, I believe that this still remains true--computers give us information without comprehension of meaning, but we can pair appropriate meaning with the information given to us, or even create meaning where meaning isn't found.

On another note, I'm surprised that there haven't been further efforts and advancements in computer psychotherapy since ELIZA, at least not that I found. I believe that there could be promise in the idea. Yes, ELIZA is a rather frustrating program to talk to, but vast improvements have been made in programming and AI since then. If we could create a program with a substantial psychology database and incorporate our fuller knowledge of creating chat bots, there could be a future of creating an effective digital psychotherapist.

For the record, I'm not suggesting that we fully replace human therapists--partially because I know quite a few people currently studying psychology who probably won't be too happy with that idea. But mainly because it's worth noting that there are people who are likely more comfortable with having face-to-face interaction, and would rather speak with a real person. Especially in terms of being able to have heartfelt moments or exchange emotions, that is much harder to do with a computer. 

But on the flipside, there are also people who most likely are too shy and uncomfortable to talk their problems out to another person, and the unbiased nature of a computer program might be soothing to them, but adding a chat function would create at least a small sense of personal interaction. Personally, I've always been wary of therapists because no matter how much education and training a therapist may have, humans are imperfect by nature. I've always been hesitant about the idea of trusting my deepest issues, the most fragile parts of my self, to someone who could have some kind of personal bias, not be knowledgeable in the right area, maybe randomly not like me or work well with me, or just be terrible at their job.That's why I feel like pursuing the idea of a digital therapist would be a worthwhile idea--it may not solve all of these problems, but ideally it would create an unbiased source with a comprehensive knowledge.

However, obviously the technology isn't all there yet. For one thing, while chat bots have massively improved since ELIZA, it's still pretty rare that I can talk to Cleverbot without getting a headache. Current diagnostic programs are hardly perfect either, there are plenty of jokes about the misadventures of trying to diagnose oneself by WebMD. While WebMD has a large database and can accept information from you, it cannot understand the information enough to always give an accurate diagnosis. Overall, this program isn't one that can be created immediately, probably at least a few more years of work needs to be done.

There is also the question of, in order to be a good psychotherapist, would a program have to be able to comprehend meaning and emotion? I do feel that a digital psychotherapist would have to have a higher comprehension of meaning than computers of today do. Especially in terms of being able to "read between the lines" of what a patient might say--when in a sensitive situation like a psychological session, a patient might not always be able to be completely forward. The program may need to be able to comprehend when someone is lying or isn't being direct, and also the difference between those two. Largely so that the program can handle the situation correctly, and also to avoid misdiagnosis (like with WebMD) and the general chatbot frustration as the program tries to figure you out. 

I also feel that at least a basic comprehension of emotion might be needed, especially to tell if the patient is upset or uncomfortable. If a chatbot continued to press personal questions on a patient who, to a human, is showing clear signs of agitation, then the patient might get too scared or disheartened to continue the conversation, and might even be scared away for good.

I could go deeper into this, but I fear this blog post may turn into an actual essay, so I'd better stop here. However, I find the idea of digital psychotherapy a fascinating concept, especially since we recently read about how information theory ended up giving inspiration to psychological researchers. Hopefully, as technology continues to grow smarter, it'll be an idea we'll see developed in the future.