Thursday, September 28, 2006
Wireless is good, really.
I realized today I have an obsession with the dystopian aspect of a wireless, connected society. I don't ever stop to think about the strictly positive influences of increased wirelessness. Regardless, I welcome it, and I'm excited for it. I see hundreds of uses, increased convenience, and new schools of thought, culture, and society developing around a "connected" society. I'm an optimist at heart. Maybe an idealist. A futurist for sure. But ultimately, my thoughts always trail into the negative.
I could blame this entirely on the fact that I hang out with too many anarchists, read too many comic books, and ingest too much sci-fi. For example, androids are whimsical to me, and yet whenever I sit down and really think about it, the idea of sentient beings, which lack some core "human" quality, and yet still exist as an integral part of our society is pretty frightening. On the same side of the coin, wirelessness seems amazing. Information will be even more at my fingertips - under my skin - than it is all ready. Convenience will triple, and we'll be able to persue strange new things we didn't think of before. I'm waxing poetic on this, and in brief, vague terms (gotta run someplace soon), but really, wirelessness is going to change the goddamn world in ways we haven't bothered to wrap our minds around yet.
Oh but then there is that whole thing about our government invading our privacy, civil agencies, corporate entities, the library, knowing everything about us. Manipulating us because our current concept of "privacy" might cease to exist. In the name of security. Globalization (forgive me for not touching upon this yet) might just screw us up big time. Old attitudes and closed minds with technology we barely know what to do with...
I mean, listen to this.
The way our societies are progressing does not give me an optimistic world view for the future. Is it silly to think this way? I've read too many books where we only have space travel and personal android lovers after we're in the vice-grip institutions of wireless globalization.
I could blame this entirely on the fact that I hang out with too many anarchists, read too many comic books, and ingest too much sci-fi. For example, androids are whimsical to me, and yet whenever I sit down and really think about it, the idea of sentient beings, which lack some core "human" quality, and yet still exist as an integral part of our society is pretty frightening. On the same side of the coin, wirelessness seems amazing. Information will be even more at my fingertips - under my skin - than it is all ready. Convenience will triple, and we'll be able to persue strange new things we didn't think of before. I'm waxing poetic on this, and in brief, vague terms (gotta run someplace soon), but really, wirelessness is going to change the goddamn world in ways we haven't bothered to wrap our minds around yet.
Oh but then there is that whole thing about our government invading our privacy, civil agencies, corporate entities, the library, knowing everything about us. Manipulating us because our current concept of "privacy" might cease to exist. In the name of security. Globalization (forgive me for not touching upon this yet) might just screw us up big time. Old attitudes and closed minds with technology we barely know what to do with...
I mean, listen to this.
The way our societies are progressing does not give me an optimistic world view for the future. Is it silly to think this way? I've read too many books where we only have space travel and personal android lovers after we're in the vice-grip institutions of wireless globalization.
// posted by Maggie @ 6:58 PM 
