Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Probably a Technophobe and getting Closer.

Third and final part of a series entitled "The Ligonier".

I was amazed watching two friends fistbump each other using "intellihands" (or intelligent handheld device) to exchange information. The information that they exchanged - I could not say as to its importance, but I could say it raised some of my more paranoid questions in regards to our future. A future which seems to be rapidly approaching.


The Ligonier brought up a whole lot of topics, and in the conversation regarding my friend's financial disturbance he told me of an article he recently read.

"In a few years, our IDs will be kept in these handheld devices."

And this reminded me of the fistbump I witnessed earlier that week, where the physical action of bumping fists, produced an exchange that the mind alone or the notepad and paper should have accepted and stored to both individuals, and not the madness in mine that soon followed; I reminded my friend that there are devices out there that can be surgically implanted into the skin. The devices are called RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification Device.

RFIDs are used to company inventories, and in some European hospitals, they are used to track patients and their conditions. Here while the first may be used more frequently in the means to protect companies from loss through theft, veterinarians provide peace of mind for the owners of dogs and cats by letting them recognize the unrecognizably scrambled mess on the side of the road, without having to undergo some form of recognition autopsy.

Fear.

I believe it is what drives this technoeconomy. After 9-11-2001 - a time when we were told that no one was safe, intellihands became immensely popular as did the increase of information. What also increased at the time was the rampant abuse of personal and financial identifications which brought forth a wave of ID protections, which continue to prove useless no matter how hi-tech, because on everything we apply for from credit to jobs requires information that would otherwise be ours alone to share with an increasing paranoid government.

And the online malls where we buy our necessaries and unnecessaries, have their own walls of protection built for us, which though well packaged are nothing more than office cubicles - providing just enough protection to think that we are alone.

Fear.

Fear of public speaking - Youtube.

Fear of germs - Bluetooth.

Fear of your poor esteem and close relationships - Facebook.

Fear of mispellings - Spellcheck.

Fear of meeting new people - Face recognition.

Fear of hard work - Wikipedia, Wii, GuitarHero

Fear of want - Amazon.com, Ebay, Craigslist.

Elbert Hubbard, that often thought eccentric artist, once said that fearing a possible mistake by cowering to it is one of the biggest mistakes a person could make. And here, nearly 100 years since his passing, we are creating software applications to avoid that fear at any cost, which in the end will make us, as a species.

If fear is met and conquered, as a climber may challenge Everest, we become more than what we were. However, in this day and age, we hire digital sherpas, who do it (the hard work) all without us moving even a single muscle, and we, if we are honest with ourselves, know that we deserve absolutely for it.

But our egos, sensitive to our fears and luxuries will develop more programs to meet and relieve us of even the most minute sensitivities, and rest assured it will not be long before our intellihands are greeting our virtual children with timidity as they awaken to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Part 1
Part 2

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