Friday, September 12, 2014

Dumb Human, Smart Phone




Our species is regressing towards a crooked smart-phone-starring homo sapiens. There are no more evening conversations with the partner, no more chat with the son, no more uninterrupted dialogues with the colleagues during lunch or coffee breaks, no more physical visits to a friend at his birthday. We are so attached to the virtual world, that we do not realize what is happening around us.

I wonder what the attendant at Starbucks might think when the customer orders his Cappuccino Grande without lifting his sight from the cell phone. Probably he finds it rude or even fears for his job, because soon the order will be made online through a dedicated application and a machine will prepare the coffee.

We should cut to the chase and connect our brain directly to worldwide Internet. This way we will get rid of that unpractical germ-carrying small device that gets lost, runs out of battery, generates car accidents and will cause chronic back and neck problems. We should be consequent and completely wire our brains into all the servers of this world.

Google Glass is only the first step towards the hyper connected society, where soon the ultimate operating system is going to replace our brains by memorizing, analyzing, prioritizing, synthesizing and last but not least making choices for us. I see a scenario, not like in Terminator where machines rule the world, more something like the Matrix, where we become an integral part of the machine. The big question is, if before crossing the threshold, we will have learned to press the "off" button. After my 10-year-old son read this blog, he asked: "Did a human write this or a phone?"