For this weeks blog, we were assigned to watch a couple of video's and share our thoughts on them. In order to have a full understanding of the content in this blog, I feel it is necessary to include the links to those videos to share them with the rest of the viewers. Honestly, I had no idea about this technology until after watching this video, and from the looks of it, it's sort of groundbreaking.
So, this link takes you to a video of Pattie Maes exploring the concept of a technology called Sixth Sense. There are a great amount of components that go into explaining this technology. Pattie Maes explains it much better than I could, but to summarize the product, it is a basically a mobile computer that allows you to check a great variety of things that would have other taken you more than a few minutes to do at a computer. It is a device that is to be worn around your neck that contains a camera, projector and a mirror. You then color code your fingers, tape is used in the video, but you can also use a colorful nail polish and you use your fingers as a guide for what you want to do. In this video they showed Mistry (the one who does all the work on this device) using his fingers to make the "picture" and the device snaps a picture of what is in the boundaries of his fingers.
This second link takes you to a video of Pranav Mistry, the person who works directly with the technology and expands and improves on its capabilities. In this video he talks basically about the same things as the previous video, just explains them how he see's it. All in all it is an impressive technology that allows users to instantly do something that they want to do or look up. It makes cell phones seem less than what they are, which isn't an easy task. To sum up my thoughts on the videos here, I honestly think that this technology is remarkable. I think it just goes to show how advanced our world is and just how easy technology has made everything. It is hard to think about what life like was before we had technologies like this to aid us with our everyday life.
With that being said, there are a few questions I would like to address when it comes to this technological blog.
Are we tuning out the physical world?
- In all honesty, I think we are. I think this because, from my experience my generation is engulfed in their technology. It is a rarity to go somewhere where someone doesn't have their cell phone sitting on the table right next to them. I carry my cell phone on me at all times. Partly because I am paranoid that if I don't have it, someone has stolen it or is going to steal it and the other part of me doesn't want to miss anything. Without that technology with me at all times I feel like I may miss an important phone call or text message and that isn't something that I would want to do. So yes, I do think we are tuning out the physical world because the virtual world seems to be more amusing to us.
Are we moving closer and closer to living digitally?
- Sadly, I think we are and I think the sixth sense technology as show earlier in this blog shows us that exactly. We are slowly bur surely starting to rely on the digital world for everything. To run our business, to connect with our friends, to tell us where to go, to tell us what to believe, to advertise to us, I think that in a way we already live digitally. I say this because there are some people who spend their lives in a digital world. They create a world that they would rather live in to escape from the one that they are stuck having to deal with. I think that the sixth sense technology is great in a lot of ways but at the same time I think it takes away a personality and takes away being able to think for ourselves. If we can't think for ourselves, our decisions can't be that rational. I mean, how rational can a digital device really be? I think that these devices are made with a bias, based on who creates them and for all we know we could be living the live they want us to because we rely on their technology. Overall, I don't think technology is a bad thing, I just think we need to be really careful about it or else we are going to lose a sense of self, not to mention a culture because we will all be computerized.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of living in a digital world?
- Benefits, everything is easier. For a lot of reasons living in a digital world makes things easier, it makes your problems more solvable, you never have a question about anything, and everything you would ever need is presented in front of you. The drawbacks is a totally different story. I personally feel that the drawbacks to living in a digital world outweigh the benefits of it. I feel like if we lived in a completely digital world we wouldn't be able to think for ourselves, we would lose that sense of personalization, we wouldn't know how to communicate or hold a conversation and we wouldn't know how to react to a lot of things because we wouldn't be challenged to do them. I feel like there are some aspects of a digital world that would greatly help us in our day to day life but overall you would not get my vote to live in a completely digital world, we would be like robots.
To sum up everything in this post, the sixth sense technology is amazing. It is innovative and something that would make our lives less complicated, no doubt about it. However, I think that living in a digital world would prove more challenging than beneficial and we wouldn't know how to interact with one and other because we spend most of our time interacting with a computer. I would say that everyday we are moving more and more towards living in a digital world and we need to remember to step away from the computer and act like a human being, not a robot.
No comments:
Post a Comment