I have been watching co-founder of WIRED magazine and sometime web prophet Kevin Kelly’s video from 2012 on his observations and predictions for technology into the future.
This is a follow-up from his previous Ted talk video in 2007 where he discussed how we as humans are building a single global machine, the web.
My response was curious one as I urgently searched through the drawers in my kitchen for some form of coloured tape to block out the camera on my laptop or what he describes as ‘the eye’. I do not regard myself as naive. I read Orwell’s “1984” when I was fifteen. Was George Orwell psychic? Why do I suddenly feel so paranoid?
As I listened intently to Kevin Kelly describing the ubiquitous screen that has infiltrated our culture, society and consciousness, the Telescreen in 1984 sprung to mind. Not only that but he goes on to explain how technology can track your eyes as you interact online so that your moods and emotions can be identified. Technological and web innovation will subsequently respond and adapt to our particular wants and needs.
What he calls the ‘eye’, I call ‘the cornea’, i.e. wearable screen technology such as Google glasses or the more recent Microsoft Hololens headsets.This is the convergence of an augmented world with a virtual world in order to create a single reality where devices are used to a much lesser extent. Devices may in fact become extinct. We may look back and reminisce about how ugly, cumbersome and unsophisticated the iPhone 6 was and scoff at the fact that we were once all ‘glued to our iPads’. It seems like we have already begun to give the web a body and its innards are advancing and restructuring at an incredible pace.
We are already co-dependent on technology. I have not memorised a phone number in years. I sometimes have trouble remembering my own number. The single most important thing for me to memorise these days are the multitude of passwords I use to log in to different sites. Google is my ‘go-to’ guy should I need to find out where I can buy the best masking tape to cover the all-seeing ‘eye’ on my laptop.
The invention of the Ekso Bionic suit is co-dependency done well. Irishman Mark Pollock, who as the result of an accident is paralysed has been pioneering the use of this technology to cure paralysis. This illustrates a meeting of the human brain and technological innovation. Unfortunately, the Ekso Bionic wear is not yet available in Ireland and even if it was, it is for now unaffordable for most.
Cybernetic totalist theorists believe that computer technology will become as powerful as the human brain in the not to distant future. Jaron Lanier rejects this notion for a few reasons in his One Half a Manifesto, one being that hardware and software will never match in their advancement for long enough at any given time, particularly computer software. He understands why cybernetic totalists might be inebriated by the very possibility but concludes that they lack humility and scientific skepticism.
This is to be explored again but he sums up with the following statement,
“Treating technology as if it were autonomous is the ultimate self-fulfilling
prophecy. There is no difference between machine autonomy and the abdication
of human responsibility”.
Image:all seeing eye by Jentapoze
Jenny Regan Cybercultures 