Seriously, people. Robots. Because I’m a closet sci-fi dork (or due to this blog, not so closeted), I like to think about the future. And I’m not talking about thinking about the future in the “what am I going to do with my life/planning my wedding” sense, but in the flying cars sense.
I am entirely convinced the human race is going to die out due to brain cancer from our cell phones. But, in the event that doesn’t happen, and we manage to survive into the future there are some things I’d like to see.
I would love it if our roads became automated, Minority Report style. I’m a big time multi-tasker, and now that I’ll be driving a stick shift car, that’s about the only thing I’ll be doing while driving. I would love it if I could get in a car, enter my destination, and relax until I got there. However, this will never happen (although GPS devices have brought us one step closer). Why won’t it happen? Simple, male politicians. Roads are constructed and maintained as part of our government infrastructure. Point one, men like driving cars. Point two, the auto industry has some killer lobbyists (see: why we are still paying $4 for gasoline).
My family likes to tease me about the internet and my phone. I love being online. I spend a lot of time on the internet. I watch more television on my computer than I do on my tv. Most days, I don’t even turn the tv on. In contrast, I almost never turn my computer off. My family doesn’t understand why I blog, instant message, email, text and communicate in any number of other ways. Why would I want to be that accessible? My aunt constantly tells me she doesn’t want to do any of this, and that if she wants to talk to someone, she’ll just pick up the phone and call them. John McCain style, she doesn’t see the need for email or the internet.
I counter by trying to horrify her with how far I’d go with technology. I tell her that as soon as they offer biotechnology to implant in your body, I’m having a cell phone installed in my hand. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but it got me thinking. In many sci-fi books I read, people have integrated technology into their bodies. In Snow Crash there are people called gargoyles who walk around with their computers on their bodies, constantly hooked into the internet with special goggles. How far off is that from iPhones and wireless internet? In Hyperion people all have comlogs that allow them to access the internet from anywhere with a signal, and some people (cyberpukes) have a shunt (internet jack) implanted directly in their head.
Would I do that?
This is something we’ll all have to consider sooner than we may think. Human chipping is already a topic for debate. A company called the VeriChip corporation has already gotten preliminary FDA approval for microchips to be implanted into humans. These could carry medical information, become car keys, house keys, they could be virtually anything. Your credit card could be in your fingertip. Obviously, upsides and downsides. This would make mugging a person virtually impossible without cutting off their arm and having the chip implanted into your own arm. Hackers could, however, probably find a way to scan and steal the data. But hackers already do that with our current system. It would streamline our lives when it comes to finding keys, paying at the store and in a number of different ways. But it would mean bringing humans one step closer to becoming machines. Where do you draw the line?
Certain camps always reject changes in technology. They claim that technology makes us lazy and ruins our lives in various other ways. People objected to the television for killing the radio. People hate google and think it’s Big Brother (there may be some substance to that idea, but damn it is Gmail convenient).
I’ve always been an advocate of technology, preferring to focus on the ways it makes our lives better. I also like to spend a lot of time thinking about it and talking about it. Like I’ve mentioned here before, I think we’re headed for a new Age of Enlightenment. The problems tackled by philosophers in the late 18th century were issues with government. The result was democracy. The issues we’re facing now and will face over the next century are those of technology. People can dismiss science fiction as books and movies for geeks, but the truth is, science fiction is the only genre exploring the issues that will matter to us and our children as we age. The world is speeding up and technology is changing at an increasing rate. We need to spend more time thinking about robots.
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