Magical or Scary?
My uncle is only 60 years old. He says when he was a kid, he used to dream about a day in which you are able to walk in the streets and simultaneously talk to your friend at home. He says it sounded like magic in his head.
Magic. Aren’t all the things we called magic in the storybooks and disney movies happening one after another? In the past ten years the technology of smart phones and social networks has progressed so much that anyone can contact any other person in any other place of the world within two seconds. People are in direct contact with celebrities through their twitter or Instagram pages. When you are wondering about a subject that you know nothing about, google and wikipedia give you a satisfying amount of information about that subjects with just three clicks. Nothing is a mystery anymore, but unfortunately, that is not the end of the story.
The number of social networks is getting out of hand. They are called “social” networks, but the question is, are we any less lonely? Seeing people sitting in coffee shops - heads in the cell-phones; having your friends over for dinner and realizing everyone’s just hanging out with their own internet friends on Twitter at the same time, clearly answers the question: no.
I have been worried about our “technological-advanced” future, but I never was terrified of it until I came across something called “hologram celebrities.” Apparently, in some concerts, they have shown Michael Jackson and Tupac in 3-D holograms - visually not so different from a real person - dancing around and singing. This not only scared me but made me think; what if this is going to be our future? what if we are just going to make holograms of any person we like, and make them move around and be alive? What if the future is going to be full of hologram creatures and they finally take over the planet?
I don’t think it’s technology’s fault if we are acting weird with it. Technology can be used with discipline if there are rational laws designed for it. Of course, in some cases it has already gotten out of hand. For example, families don’t gather around and watch something on TV anymore. Why? because it belongs to the time were “the TV” determined for you what you can watch. Today you can watch whatever you want using the internet, and it’s not likely that all the members of the family agree to watch the same thing at the same time.
In conclusion, to me, the future does not look good. the human beings are getting lonelier and lonelier everyday. Pretty soon they are going to design their own robots and “holograms” to keep them company. But that’s just like cooking food with plastic ingredients, adding the smell from a spray can, and then trying to eat.
