Are we plummeting towards a dystopian virtual reality? When did the technological age begin? What can we really say was the first piece of technology in history?
It is perhaps an argument that has been debated upon before even modern languages or the word technology existed. Did the first human to use a rock for whatever purpose it might have been invent the first piece of technology? Did prehistoric creatures use rocks or sticks to built nests and can we consider that if they did then technology has existed long before humans ever appeared on earth.
Others might argue that technology did not exist until humans crafted tools using other tools. Was the wheel the first real piece of technology? Was it the steam engine? Or do we have to wait until we had harnessed the power of electricity?
For me this is when technology began.
A 2000 year old artefact discovered in Sumerian ruins and known as the Baghdad Battery is thought by some to be the first device to use electricity. The device is thought to have been used for electroplating and resembles many more modern and similar devices. Others argue that it was merely used to store scrolls and also resembles other items from the time which serve this purpose.
The first modern device to use electricity was the relay which was invented by Joseph Henry in 1835. It was later used for the telegraph by Morse who’s code enabled the device to be used for communication. The smartphone of its time. Although it was unable to send cat memes it was an amazing achievement and the telegraph network allowed communication almost instantaneously between vast distances.
Whatever your thoughts or definition of technology not many will argue that we are now in the midst of a technological revolution thanks largely in part to the telegraph of today, The Internet. The Internet has heralded not only a new era of communication and innovation but has given us the ability to share ideas and discoveries almost instantaneously from the moment they happen right into the palm of our hands via our smartphones. We can learn and research in seconds, hours or days what previously might have taken years thanks to higher than ever compute power and big data. Yet for many of us it’s more important that someone likes our Instagram photo. In fact as I write this I’m thinking forward and wondering will anyone actually read it or like it when I share it on my blog and post it to social media. I’m sure even the greatest minds in history wondered the same when they introduced their theories and inventions to the world.
The rate at which we are producing technology and pushing the boundaries of what we can achieve seems to be relentless. I read most of the bigger tech blogs like Tech Crunch and articles from the likes of Guardian Tech, Mashable and other major publications on a daily basis yet it’s impossible to be a complete authority on technology as it’s such a vast topic. However there are signs of a future where technology might completely take over our lives and leave us living in a strange dystopian world the likes of which we have only previously imagined in movies like Terminator, The Matrix, Total Recall or Wall-E.
The way in which science fiction becomes science fact has become a familiar occurrence. Don’t get me wrong I’m a massive tech fan and I love the way people like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and many others are making it possible to have electric self driving cars, solar powered homes, smart phones and cloud technology to name but a few of the amazing things we have developed over the past decade or so. I also love the Internet, social media, games consoles, Netflix and Spotify. But more and more they are all being connected. We use our Facebook profiles to log in to everything. We can share everything on social media at a single click and not just to a single account. We share to multiple accounts at the same time using connected apps on our smartphones and then we can see who read it, their age and where they live. We have become obsessed with data and then when that wasn’t enough, along came big data. We’re obsessed with what we do with this big data and how it can be used to influence us into buying a certain can of peas instead of a rival brand’s can of peas.
So all of that is fine in my opinion but what next for human evolution and the technology we create. Have we come to a point where we are no longer evolving because we can now just use machines and computers to do all the hard work both mentally and physically? What happens when it’s not just our smartphones and social media that are connected to each other but more and more of our every day lives become connected to technology in some way.
Let’s look at some of the things we see now that may cause this shift in the not so distant future.
1 – Virtual Reality
Ok so VR has been around a long time but when we saw it first emerge it was expensive and scary to some. Now we see it being developed by companies such as the Facebook owned Oculus and Sony for their new PlayStation VR. What once was a distant dream has become a reality and the thought of entering the gaming world and being fully immersed in it is a really exciting prospect.
And it’s not just headsets but gloves where touch sensors give us the sensation of physically interacting with the virtual world and whole physical environments where the player roams around a warehouse which has been set up with crude basic walls or barriers that are transformed into jungles or distant planets. We can battle aliens, enemy soldiers and chase them in for through these specially adapted spaces. Or we can choose to do the same from the comfort of our own home without having to break a sweat. We can even go online, check our email, shop, update our social media using our eyes or fingers to navigate around the new cyber web.
Sporting events could benefit greatly from VR as fans can be given a virtual seat in an already sold out stadium. They can Interact with the crowd who may be physically at the game of watching from their apartment in Japan or Australia. These virtual tickets could be sold by the likes of Real Madrid, The L.A. Lakers,or by networks like Sky Sports.
2 – The Internet Of Things
So we have our smartphones connected to social media, we can use them to stream music, send emails etc. But now they can become much more as IOT technology will allow us to control almost everything we own. We already have apps to set up our TV boxes to record a certain show or play a YouTube video over wifi but we have only begun to scratch the surface of what we can connect and do. Smart fridges can do our shopping for us when we run out of certain items. We can operate the lights and heating in our homes from anywhere as long as we have Internet access. We can summon our car from the garage and have it park itself outside the front door and our house alarm can send us live video to our smartphones and alert us in case of a burglary.
3 – Autonomous Vehicles
We have all seen the Google self driving cars and the Tesla autopilot function in action and more and more our cars are connected to the Internet and have become masterpieces of technology. We have also seen some downsides however with cars being hacked and some very isolated incidents of crashes involving self driving cars. The first autonomous vehicle I had the pleasure to work with was in a distribution centre in Dublin all the way back in the year 2000. It was a simple pallet truck which was used to transport one pallet at a time from the end of the manufacturing line to the warehouse. A simple yet highly effective machine which worked 24/7 except when it needed to recharge which it also took it upon itself to do at every opportunity available.
But this machine for me gave a glimpse of things to come. Recently a number of truck manufacturers including DAF Trucks, Daimler, IVECO, MAN, Scania, and Volvo drove a fleet of autonomous trucks in convoy across Europe. The vehicles were not only driven autonomously but in sync with each other which is known as platooning. This is to reduce drag and save fuel. The experiment was a success and the trucks all arrived safely at their destination.
Private Self driving cars are fine but when we start to see taxi, truck and bus drivers being replaced should we be worried? My father was a truck driver and has since retired but what should have happened to our family if he’d not been able to make a career and successful business out of it? Let’s not also forget Amazon and their use of drones to deliver packages. What next? Pizza delivery drones? Why stop there?
Deliveroo drones.
4 – Artificial Intelligence
I’m just going to jump right in here. How long will we wait before we see a song written by a machine at number one in the charts? Gotta be better than the Eurovision at least right? Companies such Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk are all heralding AI as the next big thing and all are investing heavily.
Musk has invested in Open AI which the tech genius says will help us all avoiding a fate like that of the Terminator movies and the development of the likes of Skynet which could wipe us all out if it gets too big for its boots.
5 – Biotechnology & Implants
We’ve all heard of 3D printing but the next step in our existence may be a bit more complex than printing a hand tool which was emailed to us. This actually happened on The ISS. When International Space Station Commander Barry Wilmore needed a wrench, NASA “e-mailed” him one. And their 3-D printer built it.
But now we live in a world where amputees can be given bionic limbs that not only function but are controlled by implants in the wearers brain and can actually enable them to feel objects. If we look further to the future we will have the ability to print body parts using cells taken from our bodies and transformed into veins, arteries and eventuality hearts, lungs and who knows what else?
Nanotechnology will also play a major factor in this biotech revolution and implants may become common for whoever wants one. This can give us the ability to control our environment using just our thoughts. Possibly even communicate with each other without the need for smartphones.
If it all seems a bit overwhelming then perhaps it is? Should we fear the future? In my opinion yes we should and we should fear it more than we seem to and make the changes now that will prevent the human race breaking into two separate species. One which struggles for food, jobs, water, money, homes on a scale the likes of which we haven’t seen before. Unfortunately this species of human will be in the majority.
So what of the others?
The other species of human will be the elite wealthy and will not even be aware of the other species. They will live in a cyber world constantly wearing VR glasses or implants which will have become much more ergonomic and even tailored to the individual. So much so that they will be virtually invisible and connected to touch sensors or even brain implants that give the sensation of touch without the need for any type of physical stimulus to any other part of our body. They will be constantly connected to social media, instant messaging and able to communicate through thought with someone on the other side of the planet. Or maybe even with someone on Mars.
They will have a virtual version of themselves in cyberspace that’s used for their profiles and able to tailor this avatar in online cyber shops that sell the latest fashions all of which are versions of today’s high street designer brands who have also moved into cyberspace.
The commute to the office may not be necessary but journeys will be made in autonomous luxury cars with the occupants still immersed in their cyber world and unaware of the large autonomous trucks that follow closely and in synchronisation with every other vehicle on the road.
The family home will be solar powered with every device connected to the web, the family’s home VR private network and possibly their implants. Robot butlers will deliver a cold beer from the fridge because you thought about it and executed the command. The fridge will order more beer online when it sees that that there are just a few left and you like to have at least 4 at all times. It will do this for all groceries following a pre determined set of instructions or responding to certain on the spot demands. A drone will immediately be dispatched with the required items which will automatically be paid for and put into their proper place once delivered.
Entertainment will be almost limitless with interactive movies and virtual bands playing live in the home. Recreations of classic live performances by artists living or long dead can make it seem like we’re centre stage at a classic venue or that the band are in our living room.
Stadiums will be packed not with athletes but instead with gamers or drone pilots locked in battle as crowds cheer on their heroes. Other viewers will immerse themselves in the action while wearing their VR headsets at home and viewing the action live as they take their virtual seat in a sold out stadium.
Those who can afford these luxuries may also have the luxury of living longer thanks to advanced biotechnology and the ageing process might well be slowed down allowing better sight, hearing, physical ability and general health. Not that they will use these as much as we do now.
But now comes the really scary part. None of this might matter if AI has used all of the big data we are now collecting and become more intelligent than we could’ve previously imagined. Learned how to learn more and more efficiently and give itself capabilities we were too primitive to even contemplate. Could our technology be used against us? Self driving cars, smart machines, the Internet, cyberspace all turned against us without us even knowing as AI plays its stealth moves to defeat us while all the time pretending to be our friend. A move that would see less resistance as an expert hand that was played until we serve no further purpose. A Terminator or Matrix scenario.
Truly intelligent AI would surely be capable of the latter. A switch from our own VR world to one created by our new rulers or ruler. Would the elite even blink as the switch was made in the middle of their 4th straight hour of virtual golf.
Could those with implants have their brains hacked? Could VR be used to hypnotise and turn us against each other? Has the almighty returned to finally judge us?
Have we finally created a true God?
The Digital Dub 