Technology; the good, the bad and the ugly
CoolTown paper ,in my opinion, is pretty successful on out-speaking the hidden ugly face of future technologies that are represented from a positive perspective. I have never seen a commercial of a new ubiquitous technology that claims anything like solving humanity problems like poverty but they just concentrate on individual use cases that can only be experienced by the rich that can effort to buy it. "Technology wherever and whenever you need them" is just the they want us to believe but it will just make us more addicted to it and kill the old alternatives so that we will be willing to pay more for it? It is hard to see any public phones in many countries now since people are addicted to cell phones, and even those who cannot easily afford them are forced to buy them due to the lack of any public pay phones. The more the devices get networked, the more the people can be traced and controlled. It is also never mentioned on these videos. We are presented that the Bob is congratulated by the vending machine but we are not told about another very possible scenario of his boss tracing how much drink he is spending or what he is doing on his computer. In short, all these videos that predict the future technology integration into social life are produced by companies that will make money out of it and they are all painted with the shiny gold color of capitalism. I would like to see a video created by a non-profit organization that try to protect privacy or Greenpeace or a conservative group like a church. These may provide different perspectives on how the future highly networked technologies may affect our social experince.