Not so long ago, I bought myself a new mobile phone that I thought was very “smart”. By smart I mean that it can pretty well do some neat things to help me manage my more than busy work schedule. There are so many features on this phone that it will take me a few years to be able to employ the full capability of the gadget.
But if I think my phone is "smart", I was even more baffled to read what the intel gurus are predicting about future phones and even TV’s. They are predicting that these and other devices are going to become our trusted advisers. Mindful of my many mood swings, I am intrigued by the possibility that one day soon the personal devices and gadgets we use will be able to sense our moods. Hence, it will soon be possible for Ultra Smart Phones to react to my moods and for my television to even identify if it is really me watching the programme. This should make for some interesting developments for those who compete at home to look at favourite programmes!
The implication is that there is going to be a change in the way we view our relationships with our gadgets. I suspect we are already aware of this! So my phone or TV of Notebook will become my assistant or even companion. Lord have mercy! These future devices will constantly be learning about who we are and how we live, work and play – everything about us. And even the remote of our TV will be able to determine who is holding it based on the grip and how it is held and astutely calculates the viewer preferences (re Channels). And this is only the tip of the multiplicity of possibilities before us.
According to the experts these future possibilities of making all of our context/life readily available on the Net, will heighten our conversations and fears around identity threat and make this look like an ancient joke. The question for us is whether we have become latently enslaved by our own ingenuous creations of simulated worlds around us. And is this ability making us more human or less human? Is there a limit to our ideas of progress and can we ever put the genie back into the bottle? While every new invention will promise us stars and the moons, do we really need them? And I need to ask myself: did I really need that new phone? and if not, why did I purchase it?
