Originally posted by christopher wong on January 12, 2019
In the book Utopia is Creepy (podcast regarding book found here), Nicholas Carr writes about the how our hopes for technology have often not met our expectations. TV shows (Black mirror), books (someone is a previous post mentioned Dave Eggers’ The Circle) and popular media (articles on Wired) have all looked at how technology’s promise is often co-opted by large corporations motivated by profit rather than a greater good.
Black Mirror makes many of its viewers uncomfortable precisely because it taps into our fear as powerful and invasive technologies are unleashed on a world that does not have a legal or cultural framework in place that they can fit into. I’d like to share the r/futurology and r/darkfuturology subreddit as a resource for some of the real and imagined cultural implications of mobile technology and hopefully as a helpful resource for generating ideas for A1, A2 and A3 assignments for those, like me, who may have trouble imagining the future cultural implications of mobile technology. Both subreddits often generate thought provoking discussion and highlight current debates around new trends in technology.
r/futurology (filtered with “mobile” keyword)
Chris
I couldn’t help but share another of Christopher’s posts this week because the potential future constraints imposed on us by mobile technology can indeed be quite frightening when we think about all that could conceivably go wrong, or at least, all the changes we may not welcome based on our personal ideas surrounding safety, security and privacy. Even just the idea of having your temperature scanned before walking into stores (a reality now in some places) is considered wildly invasive to some and a welcome protection for others.
Aside from the thought of for-profit companies valuing money over the concerns of private citizens, there’s also the potential for governmental interference in a way that limits our civil liberties. In fact, just today the City of Toronto announced that they would be reporting out data relating to postal codes and COVID-19 cases. Though that’s not 100% connected to private data recorded by mobile technologies, it’s not hard to see future potential for mobile-based health tracking by governmental bodies and what that might entail.
Now, I myself am not a reddit user and am not very comfortable navigating that website/app, but a quick perusal of the first link “r/futurology” brought a lot of concerns to mind regarding the future of mobile tech. Check it out – if you dare.
Hi James, thanks for picking this post! It’s the constant debate we have for technology and in Chris’ post, he talked about the profit gained by big companies versus a greater good. A greater good doesn’t necessarily mean it benefits more people as who is to decide what is the “greater good”? Something that comes to my mind first is the idea of designer baby (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designer_baby) and in some ways, one can say that by removing genes associate with disease, the technology is contributing to the greater good while on the other hand, is it something everyone or most people feel comfortable with? The same goes with what you mentioned in your review about privacy breach and the use of mobile technology.
On an unrelated note, anyone else instantly thinks about the movie Hot Fuzz when hearing the greater good?
It’s clear that ethical debates are going to rage as we new moral dilemmas announce themselves through technological advances. As for designer babies, I am very much on the fence at the moment, and I believe that people’s realities, and the decisions that they make as a result, can be so drastically different, to the point where two very opposing beliefs can both make sense within their own contexts. I can’t imagine how my feelings on designer babies might change both with knowing the potential risks associated, and with further genetic testing on my part that may reveal potential genetic defects that I wouldn’t want to pass on to my offspring. Who knows, that may be something that a lot more of us have to decide upon in the near future.