The Art of Communications

What if technology stopped advancing?
Without further advancements in microchip-based technology, would we survive? As a society? As educational institutions? As businesses and health care organizations?

How much technology do we really need to keep moving forward? Having my body constantly monitored by sensors, recording every vision, every word uttered. Why not suck my brain out through my nostrils like the ancient Egyptians did during mummification and stick a Dell sticker on my forehead?

One of my worse nightmares is that as a society, we give up all thoughts, all choice processes to computers. I refuse to go down that path. I enjoy using my brain to figure things out, especially everyday issues like time (don’t own a digital watch), and calculating the change when I make a purchase. Little things yes, but these are mental processes I control. If I can’t remember what photograph I took with whom on what day and where, then it just couldn’t be that important. I’m one of the few people without caller ID. I like to be surprised when I answer the phone. I feel the same way about sonograms. But that’s just me.

We are not machines
Even the strongest of us have a limited capacity for thought, emotions, reactions to external stimuli. It’s one of the reasons most of us require sleeping almost a third of each day to recharge our complex but fragile systems. We’d explode from overload if we did not.

Unless you need technology to continuously record your physical functions, it seems unhealthy and unnecessary. Blood pressure is easy to chart, but it changes constantly throughout the day as we experience life. A constant monitoring of body systems would probably be the cause of more strokes and heart attacks, just from worrying about how our body naturally reacts to what we put it through every day. While some of these microchip-based healthcare technologies are good for high-risk patients, we don’t need an ubiquitous, electronic friend always nearby, or inside.

What about human advancement?
It seems that so many of the articles I read promote the advancement of technology without considering if we really need it. Maybe it’s time to rethink about how advancing technology effects people. Do we really need to compartmentalize and categorize every moment in our lives with 24/7 microchip-based photography, audio-video equipment as part of our clothes or skin?. Total recall didn’t do so well for Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie of the same name.

I want it to be my choice of how I use technology, how I will record and use digitally stored memories. My life is not a television show to be recorded, played back or viewed by others. It is a unique period of time that I am here, that you are here, that we all are here on planet earth. Technology should be one of the many tools we use to make our lives easier. Just because we can do it, doesn’t mean we should.

Technology is just a tool
I just don’t think it’s that important if we have the storage capacity to hold 80 years of personal memory, data, a lifetime of thoughts, if we have not improved the person doing the recording or the people we are recording. I am not a research project.

Even in Digia’s mobile telephone design, humans, the final interface, were only included at the end of the design process. In designing a GPS connection for Nokia Communications, Digia used a paper model in their product development. They concluded that technology for technology’s sake would not drive customers to their new phone. Improved features had to be those that people wanted to use.

But still this brings me back to how do advancements in technology benefit human development? If as humans, we are still violent, irrational, unkind to others, selfish, and any other deplorable human trait you wish to include, how much has technology helped us? As Charlton Heston called out at the end of the movie, Soylent Green, “It’s people.” I honestly prefer advancing people to machines. Let’s focus on that.

While it would seem that I view technology as a foe, it is just the opposite. I love technology. I couldn’t do my communications job or the photography I love without its benefits. I’ve worked with computers for more than twenty years, and I eagerly look forward to technological advancements in the future. I believe, quite simply, that technology is just a tool. Like a knife and fork, an automobile, a buzz saw, a great pair of sneakers. It helps me achieve a goal, accomplish a task, savestime, reduce cost, easily connect with other people. But it does not dominate my life. Instead I want to live in real time, in real space, with real people and real technology that advances the world and the people who live in it.

References
Czerwinski, M., Gage, D.W., Gemmell, J., Marshall, C., Pérez-Quiñonesis, M., Skeels, et al (2006). Digital memories in an era of ubiquitous computing and abundant storage. Communications of the ACM, 49(1), 45-50.

Kangas, E. & Kinnunen, T. (2005). Applying user-centered design to mobile application development. Communications of the ACM, 48(7), 55-59.