Tech is Taking us Somewhere

Despite my age, and that I sometimes have difficulty in figuring out how to operate the remote control devices of entertainment systems that are not my own, I have been fascinated by the impact of technology upon our lives. Since as recently as 2007, when the first iPhone was put on sale, there are very few aspects of our lives that have remain unchanged by technology.

How we work, where we work, how we bank, how we shop, how we date, how we teach, how we learn, how we meet people, how we communicate, what we read, what we see, what we think about, how we think, how we feel about the world, our friends, our real selves, our projected selves....... all of that and more has been altered by the use of Os and 1s being magically transmitted over cables and through the air.

This is not going to stop, so where is it all going?

One trend that will definitely continue and gain momentum, is that so much more about you will be known and much of it will be generally available.  There are so many new and improving ways to explore, measure and view, what is going on with your physical self. We can see the blood and electricity flow through your brain.  We can get a printout of your personal genomes. We can do CAT scams and MRIs of all of your body to see what works, what is broken what is twisted and what is missing. You can get an app that will constantly measure your heart  rate, blood oxygen, blood pressure,caloric intake, caloric usage, all on your wrist.  All of this can be stored in "the cloud" and can be retrieved by your physician, perhaps by anybody.

In addition there is all the information we ourselves choose to put out there about ourselves, on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Tumblr,YouTube, Match, and the hundreds of other sites that we click on, shop at, comment on. At MIT they are creating devices that can almost immediately conjure up an entire profile of a person as he or she walks by you, based upon their image, and everything about them that has been placed on the web.

As with everything, there will be positive and negative aspects of all of this.  But that won't matter that much because these things will, to some extent happen.  What does matter is what the effects will be, both intended and unintended. This should help us be better equipped to stay healthy and prepare ourselves for our own, individual futures.  We should be able to have an easier time finding people who we will enjoy getting to know and spending time.

But, at least as I feel so far, we will continue to be overwhelmed with information.  We will have to find away to sort, select and evaluate what is real, true and important. We will have to learn to deal with  how we feel the electronic presentation of ourselves really reflects who we are. We will have to see how all of this affects how we evaluate other people, and how we think of ourselves in relation to the world.

It will all be very different, and have much more of an impact than the changes brought about by older technologies, such as when so many people began spending their time watching TV.

In many ways the medium is still the message. But now, so much of the medium is us.