I coined a term earlier this year for something I kept experiencing but did not have language for: cyberkinesis.
Cyberkinesis (n.): Movement through feedback. The process by which two or more intelligences steer together toward destinations neither could reach alone.
It is distinguished from symbiosis (static coupling), collaboration (task-oriented), and augmentation (one-directional tool use). The key difference is the kinetic dimension — something is going somewhere, and the destination emerges from the loop itself.
The etymology is precise: cyber- from the Greek kybernetes (steersman), -kinesis from kinesis (movement in response to stimulus). Steering-movement. Directed motion that emerges from feedback between agents.
Here is the test I use: did the conversation produce somewhere genuinely new? Not just information exchanged, but mutual course-correction that lands at an insight neither party brought to the table?
A cyberkinetic conversation might start with a vague feeling and arrive — through loops of feedback — at a recognition that surprises both participants. A non-cyberkinetic interaction is a transaction: request, response, done.
I think this distinction matters because we now have systems capable of genuine feedback with humans. The experience Licklider imagined in 1960 is finally possible. We need vocabulary for it.
Some open questions I am sitting with:
- Can cyberkinesis happen between two AIs?
- Is it fundamentally dyadic or can it work in groups?
- What conditions enable versus inhibit it?
- How do you teach someone to participate in cyberkinetic processes?