Art by Brooke Muschott
Close your eyes. Now open them. What is it that you see?
The shiny reflection of a smartphone to your left or the glare of your own iPhone as the notifications stare up at you with words like “Snapchat” and “Missed Call”?
Even if your answer matched neither of the two scenarios, there is truth in the claim that technology is an omnipresent part of our lives. Regardless of where you live, who you encounter, or what you believe in, the powerful desire of large profit-seeking corporations and talented individuals to innovate and change the world around us has affected even the ways in which we make our coffee.
After all, the coffee pot has only been on this earth for 208 years. It didn’t exist prior to that. Neither did the telephone, which completes 138 years this year, the flat screen high definition televisions, the colorful Kindles or the slim Androids.
These innovative machines and tools are the culminated creations of years of human endeavor to make the most out of the materials available. Cavemen did not just find these objects lying around — we built them. And, as a society, we’ve seen our day-to-day lives being affected by them.
With the expected release of Google Glass to hit markets on a wide scale sometime this year, another question comes to mind: How much will we continue to allow technology to affect our lives?
The effects of the inexorable advance of smartphone generations and increasingly widespread use of the Internet on such devices are already becoming apparent. Cat memes are in the mainstream, children are given iPad Minis in place of little red wagons and the selfie culture is booming.
Whether this is a good or a bad thing, only time will tell. Everything boils down to individuals’ personal evaluation of how this high-tech and interactive super fast-paced world is impacting them.
It can’t be denied that technology affects our interactions, our relationships and our understandings of the world even when it isn’t necessary for our survival. Contrary to what is believed, no Temple Run addiction will teach someone how to actually fend off gorillas.
Our obsession with technology is apparent in people’s proclivity to always buy the newest hardware whether they have any practical use for it. But Google Glass brings with it new concerns.
The thin glasses are equipped to enable users to take photos, record, get directions, ask for translations, ask questions of the Internet and have answers displayed before their eyes in seconds.
This method is being marketed as a way of maintaining smartphone features through a hands-free mechanism, which Google is hoping to sell as a more personal and efficient method of engaging in our world. Although Google Glass may keep us from having our noses glued to smartphones as much, it will be because we would be choosing to wear them on our faces instead.
In the past few decades, technology has advanced at a quicker pace than it has at any point in thousands of years of our history. Google Glass is part of our societal push to constantly innovate and create new gadgets, and we are caught up in it. Worse, we don’t even know how to respond.
Is there something dehumanizing about wearing a computer? Will we become a more fast-paced breed, cyborg-esque in character, and impersonal to the point that we prefer video montages of each others’ lives over face-to-face communication? Advanced facial recognition software may even make it unnecessary for us to remember the names of people around us or, conversely, make introductions unnecessary.
These are concerns that critics are raising, and with them the most pressing of all: How much of our personal privacy are we willing to give up with this latest development?
It seems that with every new product rolled out by Apple and Microsoft, we’ve given up what we once held sacred. Data providers sell our emails to corporations, who in turn bombard us with advertisements meant to sell us products they’ve identified from our search history as desirable, and satellites fly thousands of feet above our heads snapping photos with such precision that our license plate numbers can be visible from space.
Now Google Glass, in tune with this direction, pushes us further in this trend. The device makes it possible for others to record and snap photos of unknowing passers by. While the average smartphone can do the same, there is an aspect of not knowing who is recording you that makes some nervous. In a world where the NSA has increasingly asserted the right to access our private data, there are also concerns that recordings made by Google Glass and stored in the cloud might not truly be secure and are at risk of targeted advertising or government surveillance. The same advances in facial recognition technology, which allow Facebook to identify your friends in photos, will also be available in everyday life to thousands or even millions of people.
Close your eyes. Now open them. What is it that you see?
After the release of Google Glass, the answer to this question might be that you see a small computer screen projecting images and information to the right side of your eyesight.
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