This week we explored the two different potential extremes that technology can have in our lives. On the one hand, several of the videos and readings we watched and read were about Augmented Reality and its potential impacts on the future. Although the effects of Augmented Reality will probably extend to every single corner of our lives, we focused on some potential prominent effects on gaming, dating, privacy, and more. Several more of its potential effects, from shopping to travel and history, our documented in writer Lauren Drell’s article here. On the other hand, we also brought into our discussion the “1 week no Tech” movement, which aims to make participants experience a week of their lives with no technology. The movement has the ironic flair that participants are supposed to share how they’re “1 week no tech” is going with other participants in several different online mediums. I, as well as many others, think that this ironic flair severely detracts from the aims of the movement. Nevertheless, the thought that it may be desirable to experience life without any technology is still present in the movement.

Exploring these two extremes lets us recognize that there is a large tension in our society’s attitude towards technology. Many people look to the future optimistically as one that is completely infused with mind blowing technological advances (e.g. Ray Kurzweil), while others look to the future pessimistically as one where the technology has endangered many of the aspects of human life that are essential to being human. One point that the latter group brings up is that we are being slowly eased into technological advances in potentially harmful ways. They argue that we would never willingly go to the technological places that some futurists envision that we will inevitably get to, however since we are being slowly eased into them, we more or less have no choice in the matter. Having a 1 week with no tech can potentially make us more aware of the dramatic effects that technology already has in our daily lives.

Works Cited

Drell, Lauren. “7 Ways Augmented Reality Will Improve Your Life.” Mashable. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.