Thursday, April 19, 2012
Ubiquitous, Indeed
I think it's fair to say that almost all of our lives revolve around computers. As Carie pointed out with that picture, nearly everything we do to accomplish something is done with computers--listening to music, talking to friends, watching movies, even masturbating. To think that even 20 years ago these things weren't even possible blows my mind. Computing really has become ubiquitous. We are very heavily reliant on it. It seems like I'm stating obvious things, but it's something I've really just started to think about. What would happen if social networks like Facebook collapsed or were shut down? What if computing somehow was no longer possible? What would we do? We've become so used to--and reliant on--digital technology that I find it difficult to believe that society would be able to function without them, even though that's what we did for a very long time before now.
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I think doing everything with computers will lead to this autonomous era, in which nothing is really lived anymore. Like the automation of computers, life will become very autonomous
ReplyDeleteI may be optimistic, but I have faith in the human race. We may make stupid decisions sometimes (or often) but we are very resilient. We are very good at adapting and I have faith that we will be able to adapt to whatever may happen. I can't imagine the collapse of technology will wipe out out the human population like dinosaurs, although that would be pretty funny.
ReplyDeleteI think it's important to remember that we create meaning through our society. A world without computers is all we have ever known, but is that really so bad? (Do we have any choice, anyway?) Because we are mortal with such a short life span, all we know is what we experience. Anything else just seems strange (i.e. your comment about ubiquitous computing as mind-blowing 20 years ago) but as we grow accustomed to it, it isn't so surprising. Looking back, you can already tell our society has changed immensely since 20 years ago. While everyone is running around panicking about impending doom of robots taking over the world, we are slowly adapting and what was strange is becoming the norm so slowly we barely realize it unless we look back.