Happy Tech

Lets say, you are walking in a store and are trying to figure out the best wine to get for your dinner. Red or white? Well, obviously the dish will decide that but if you are like most people and you do not have any knowledge on wine what are you to do other than maybe ask someone who might not know that much more then you. Well Imagine having a device that can take all the information from the internet and apply it to real life, in real time. Imagine being able to hold a bottle of wine and have information projected on it that pertains to your personal preferences, in this case that being which wine would go best with a particular dish. All the information about this wine comes to view via a certain device and gives you the knowledge to make the best decision according to what you want.

Well it looks as though a team from MIT is developing a device to do just that. They are calling it  Sixth Sense. And from the looks of things it seems as though the whole Minority Report hand jazz is coming to life. Now, i’m not going to go into all the functions of this device, if you are interested you should really check out the video. It is truly fascinating, and a little scary. But i think like everything else that humans have developed it has its pros and cons.

What i am interested in is what implications this technology will have on humanity. Seeing the way we use and abuse certain technologies  we already have at hand, how will we go about using this one? This technology most likely wont be out for a while so we have sometime to stew over it. But really, how will this effect peoples morality and the basis in which  we we make decisions? In one way, it would make the excuse “i didnt know” obsolete, don’t you think? If people had this accessibility to information in real time and are able to implement it in every day life, it would enhance their ability to make better decisions, or at least ones that could quite possibly be based on the persons intrinsic moral codes rather than their wanting to save money, right? In stead of buying something that is a little bit cheaper, and harmful to particular ecosystem where the product is being made, the person might spend the few extra dollars on the product that is more expensive but has no backlashes on the environment, therefore, weeding out certain companies and products that are harmful to maintaining a certain balance on this planet. In this case, having that bit of knowledge might help the consumer turn to more responsible means of consuming. Instead of our beautiful overkill that we all partake in on a weekly if not daily basis. In this context, this technology, i believe could be beyond anything we have ever come across, at least to my knowledge anyway. It would give people nearly full accountability for what decisions they make as it pertains to knowledge. Either people would have to get really good at lying or it would possibly change everything we know about decision making, whether it be conscious or subconscious.

All  the “oh mans” and “geeeez that is amazing” aside, what could the negative effects of this be? I think it is hard to say for now but, I have my suspicions. In one part of the video they talk about how you would be able to meet somebody and know certain bits of information about that person. If we stretch this a little bit, this will completely change human interaction, not saying that the internet hasn’t already, but this will do so on such an intense level, again, like nothing we have come across. Lets just say this device is out right now. Im at a coffee shop and i bump into a beautiful girl and i have my handy dandy sixth sense and i am able to see certain bits of information about this girl and same with her to me. Im guessing that there would be a way to regulate how much information can be seen by any persons, at any given time. Or at least i hope there will be. Right of the back, all of our interest, blogs we have and god knows what else could be accessible to each other. Now, on one hand all this is really doing i guess, is speeding up the process in which we could get to know one another.  We wouldn’t have to spend however long it takes to find all these things out, at least as far as the superficial things go. Is this a bad thing? I have no clue. But it would completely change the game. Maybe this device would optimize the time in which we get to know one another thus granting us more time to spend with the people we wish? It is hard to fully wrap my head around it. I feel like it could go either way, really. Maybe this might help people find others that have similar interests and personalities? Maybe it will put more weight in developing experiences with one another in a deeper field rather than keeping things at a fairly shallow level which i feel is a problem of modernity. Or, maybe this will push people to be more secluded from one another, and perpetuate this awkwardness that runs through society and meeting new people? Ugh…..what do you guys think? I can see the argument from the “traditional” side but i think the flaw in subscribing to a more traditional view point on this is that it is exactly that, based in tradition. If this technology was going to be used in a daily manner then we would have to completely change the way we do a lot of things. Morals and responsibility i believe would have to be at the top of the things to change. As of now, i dont believe people have the integrity to really use this device in a beneficial way. But maybe, i am missing the point, maybe this is the key to unlocking all of that, or maybe its the key to unlocking Pandoras Box? Aaaaaah!