How much technology is too much? This is a question that is soon to become hotly debated, providing the ubiquitous computer systems defined in Everyware comes to fruition. What really sparked my interest in this topic is not Thesis 16, instead it is a commercial that is on right now for the "Helio". The tag line of the Helio is, "Don't call it a phone, don't call us a phone company." The phone has integrated Internet, and other features that are pretty standard on smart phones. Then there is one feature that stands out. It is basically a GPS so that your friends can see your location. The ad of which I speak has two people under water, scuba-diving. They found each other using the GPS from the Helio. They only thing that I can think of is how tough it would be to tell even the smallest of lies. Say you didn't want to take someone with you to a party, so instead you told them you were staying home. You would be instantly busted. The only thing you could do is just leave your phone wherever you said you were going to be. That is a trivial example using a white lie. Now imagine if a girls obsessive ex-boyfriend had control of that technology. He could harass her on the way from class, show up where she was uninvited, ect. Of course you could turn the feature off, but turning off the feature would seem questionable to everyone that is always used to knowing where you are.
Overall the more technology advances, the less privacy we have on a day to day basis. Technology is going to advance, and will people be forced to accept it? The way it is defined in Thesis 16 makes me think that we will.
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I don't see that type of situation as trivial at all. In fact I think that is a great example of some of the everyday issues that will have to be dealt with differently by our culture. Everyware will affect all aspects of our lives and relationships. It might lead to an over paranoid society of distrust. I hope privacy security advancements will keep up with the pace of technology advancements otherwise we might take a hit in the coming years. I don't see these issues as trivial, I see them as small examples of a bigger dilemma of how we will deal with our machine-cultural relations in a ubiquitous techno-culture.
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