“Everyware (finally) insinuates itself into transactions never before subject to technical intervention.”

So, I finally found very interesting evidence in thesis 34 touching on a few key, and largely unexplored facets of the effects of modern technology and its ‘intervention’.

Case in point: Greenfield talk’s about the Brazilian company IHOUSE selling a unique product, which they call the Smart Hydro ‘intelligent bathtub’. I’m sure many of you who read this piece were not too perturbed about this insight and the description. Perhaps, quite a few of you actually thought; “My ‘cool’ personalized, digitalized, computerized and all in all, heavily technologized bathtub”. I’m personally a little cautious of this level of intervention. The question of ‘where to draw the line’ remains largely unanswered. In my opinion, everything that increases the efficiency of our actions is good. And technology seems to be our best friend in this endeavor. But what if this efficiency comes at a risk. Risk of dependency, or still worse, risk of health hazards. Having a technologized bath, for example seems strange. Not just because of its present far fetched feeling (I say this knowing that it will be in some Bond movie soon, and Bill Gates probably owns one already), but I cant seem to come to terms with the feeling of technology affecting our lives in such a way, that we are so dependent on it, that even the slightest absence of it will make us uncomfortable.

Will there be electronic tents and camps when school children go for trekking and camping trips? What about the lessons learnt from adventure and survival.

Adventure of getting lost in the jungles. Wait, is that even possible anymore?! What about GPS! It is hard to get lost with a device telling you exactly where you are and where you need to go.

Final Words: The purpose of my disconnected take on the matter was to bring out the two contrary positions. One, where I seem to oppose technology intervening with the simple bathing process. As Greenspan puts it rather well;

“But you already knew how to draw a bath, didn’t you? And you’ve somehow survived this far in life without the help of automated cells from the bathroom infrastructure…bathroom preference settings is probably not on the list of things you most want to do with your time(!)”

And the other, where technology seems to be a boon. Even though GPS might take away from us some sense of adventure, it does do a lot more. I’m sure most would agree that they’d rather have GPS than not. Better navigation, more accessibility and most of all, easier access to information, even on the move does seem like a step forward.

Technology is indeed changing our lives. How much we will allow it to change it, is still largely undecided.