Technoscience / Ecomateriality / Literature

Tag: #1wknotech

#1wknotech & Google Glasses

A week without technology may not seem as far fetched as other popular challenges happening nowadays. But when we consider how much technology influences our lives, we can see how giving up technology for a whole week can set us back weeks in terms of work and communication. Technology not only connects us to others, but it also provides us a sense of responsibility. We rely on technology to help us with our work and careers. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to keep up the fast paced life it provides us. This challenge may not be useful as a long-term commitment, but it can grant us the realization that our lives heavily rely on its advancement.

 

Companies out there have realized how technology is integrated in modern day society. Google for example, has manufactured Google Glasses, a product that can provide you with basically everything a laptop and cell phone can right in front of your eyes. With the practicality of Google glasses, it’s expected of them to be as popular as other technological products, but on the contrary, according to Forbes, “Google Glass will go down in the annals of bad product launches.” But why? Mostly, it’s due to the fact that people “can’t identify an actual use for the product.” It’s a product “ahead of its time,” with a confused potential-customer base. All in all, it’s a new product, which has earned some consumers. Buy utilizing Google glasses, people augment their realities since they see the world through technology, literally.

 

Marks, Gene. “How Google Screwed Up Google Glass.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 21 Apr. 2014. Web. 14 Nov. 2014.

Using Technology for #1wknotech

This post seems fundamentally wrong

 

 This week’s topics of focus, #1wknotech, Google Glass and Media Geology have all further affirmed my belief that we are doomed as a species to be slaves to technology (call me crazy). Starting with the #1wknotech, I think it says something to our dependence on technology that people use technology and social media platforms to talk about how it would be to not have these things. I find it a bit ironic and pointless that the whole premise of the project is to use technology as much as possible to hypothesize how it would be without technology. I think a better implementation of the project would be to go without technology for a week, then go back and reflect on the experience with the help of social media and technology.

The introduction of Google Glass and Media Geology into the mainstream of society will just increase our dependence on technology. As Google Glass picks up momentum, people won’t be able to just look at something without having a plethora of screens and monitors all around them. The idea of having to “look something up” will be foreign—rather, as soon as you need it, the information is right in front of your eyes. We will have the power to change the world around us. If you combine the power of the Google Glass and Media Technology, you can easily become the master of your environment. There will be sensors that indicate air quality, and Google glass will instantly show you if you’re in a good area to breathe or not. You can tell Google Glass if you’re uncomfortable with the temperature, and sensors in the surrounding area can adjust the temperature.

None of these seem like a bad thing, but my fear is about our reliance on them. If we depend on all of these resources to get us through our day to day life, what happens if it fails? Blackouts are not common, but they still happen…what happens if one day we lose all power? How will we be able to function as a society? Will we be able to? Maybe the reason we can’t fully do #1wknotech is because doing so would ruin us.

Augmenting Reality vs #1wkNoTech

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.

Google Images and “1 week no tech”

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This is what google images thinks “1 week no tech” is.

Thinking about what a week without technology would be like helps us reflect on our dependence on technology.  Because the progress of technology is often gradual, it may be that one day we wake up and realize that technology has taken us to places as a society where we really don’t want to be. Having a “1 week no tech” might serve as a partial antidote to this phenomenon of gradually being lulled into an undesirable place. Alternatively, it can make us grateful for the many benefits that technology gives us every day, since often these go unnoticed.

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