(Repost @design.emergency) “When humans encounter life-forms that are unfamiliar or strange to us, our instinct is often to distance ourselves from them,” writes Sabrina Imbler in the New York Times. It sounds like a natural reaction, doesn’t it? In the title of the essay, however, Imbler asks: Are You Really So Different From the Blue Sea Blob? referring to a curious creature found at a depth of 1,300 feet in the waters near St. Croix, in the US Virgin Islands, by unmanned vehicle controlled remotely by scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Imbler’s study of sea creatures––she will soon publish a book about ten of them––has led her to reflect on the human impulse to use our own body as paragon for all species. We look for limbs, faces, and sensing organs, and the less our encounters conform to our own selves, the less anthropomorphic they are, the more we cast them as alien. The bottom of the ocean pullulates with extraordinary aliens, and so does the Earth’s surface. Anthropomorphism is a double-edged sword, however. The Uncanny Valley theory in robotics says that humans feel more uncomfortable or even repelled by humanoids the closer the humanoids mimic human appearance. What are we to fear most, the unlike or the alike? And in a rapidly evolving Web3 revolution, in which an easier relationship with embodiments and avatars promises to unleash new degrees of expression and fluidity, what will be the value of familiarity? Imbler invites us to build connections with all swimming, gliding, burrowing strange strangers (a term borrowed from philosopher Timothy Morton) as a path towards the radical empathy that could help us build a better world for all. Loving the alien is the key. Images: the swimming sea cucumber, Enypniastes eximia, sometimes referred to as the headless chicken monster (NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research); Unknown Blue Organism (NOAA); Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro with one of his humanoids. #designemergency #ocean #uncannyvalley #anthropomorphic #empathy #interspeciesdesign