Our online future…will it be utopian or dystopian?
Digital Society Internet of Things session
Group members
Heather Taggart, Claire Molenda, Zainab Ugharadar, Phoebe Cornford, Daphne Wagner
Chosen topic
Stepping into the discussion of our world’s future, exploring which direction the internet is going to take… are we looking at a dystopian future or a utopian?
Utopian Future?
A new report out of the Pew Research Centre asks — and answers — what the Internet of things will look like by 2025. Its already suggested that by 2020 there will be 30 billion devices connected to the IoT.
The paper by Fred Turner explains how there are 2 dominant approaches in explaining the digital liberalism in the US, that emerges from utopian predictions. The first one states that the utopian ideology always rose when new technologies like telephones and airplanes were invented, believing that they would bring “universal wealth, enhanced freedom, revitalized politics, satisfying community, and personal fulfillment.” (p. 2)
The second, contrasting theory claims that the “techno-utopianism’ (p.2) is self surving to a new virtual class.
Therefore, the technological progress has created the utopianist ideology of how it can help to manage or order structural and cultural problems of the high-tech world, but it has also created a new transnational class that supports their position in society.
The changing image of the Hackers from being hippies to doing actual useful work in the digital world reflects how the importance of utopianism has increased after established for the first time in the 90s, in the form of conferences.
Dystopian Future?
Our privacy is in jeopardy The more connected devices there are, the more entry points there are for hackers and cyber criminals.
Hackers could access critical infrastructure such as power grids, hydroelectric dams, chemical plants and more. SmartHome devices could allow manufacturers or hackers to use connected devices to virtually or physically invade a person’s home.
85% of companies intend to offer IoT devices, yet only 10% of the aforementioned companies are confident that they could offer devices secure from hackers.
Securing an IoT device means more than securing the actual device — companies would have to build security into linked software applications and network connections as well.
Companies could also use legally collected data from consumers to make employment decisions. You might agree to the use of cookies, but do you really know what these companies can see? A company could gather information from you about driving habits while calculating your insurance rate — the same goes for tracking fitness when it comes to health or life insurance.
Our day to day lives:
- Its been thought that by 2025 people will have sensors implanted in their bodies.
- Smart fridges will become available e.g when theres not enough milk then it will be able to let us know. The idea that our devices will be able to interact with the internet on our behalf. Improving our day to day lives, helping things go a little smoother.
Employment:
“There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.” Barack Obama
https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/06/technology-and-unemployment
As Asian wages rise, factory managers are already looking for opportunities to replace employees with robots, even in China. As the advent of cheap smartphones fuels a boom in Internet access, online purchases will eliminate a vast number of retail jobs. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that, worldwide, technological change could easily lead to the loss of 5–10 million jobs each year.
Worry about the PACE of technological acceleration.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2012/10/king-ludd-is-still-dead
IPsoft’s Amelia, a virtual service desk employee, is being trialled by oil industry companies, such as Shell and Baker Hughes, to help with employee training and inquiries. Meanwhile, doctors are piloting the use of Watson, IBM’s supercomputer, to assist in diagnosing patients and suggesting treatments. Law firms are using software such as that developed by Blackstone Discovery to automate legal discovery, the process of gathering evidence for a lawsuit, previously an important task of paralegals.Even the taxi-sharing company Uber is in on the act — it has just announced it will open a robotics research facility to work on building self-driving cars.Silicon Valley-based futurist Martin Ford, whose book The Rise of the Robotscomes out this year. He forecasts significant unemployment and rising inequality unless radical changes are made. -
The Knightscope K5 is a mobile robotic security guard, equipped to patrol and monitor an area with mobile sensors, GPS and laser scanning built-in. Photograph: © Knightscope, Inc. 2015
Productivity has continued to increase while employment and median income have stagnated and even fallen. “I call it the great decoupling,” says Brynjolfsson. “It is a different pattern than what we have seen during the preceding 200 years, [and] the biggest single explanation is that technology has been affecting far more middle-skilled jobs.” Concentrated in the middle it hollows out this group, making things more unequal.
