The Present Moment
Technology Can Help Us Get There
It’s easy to tune out of the present moment and seek comfort in the warmly lit screen of a phone or computer. More and more we find fault in the world around us, pursuing satisfaction from social media, internet sites and the virtual reality universe. Today’s unique and numerous advancements in technology have allowed us to rely on the internet, but tomorrow’s alterations might be the key to freeing us from this dependence. By maximizing machine efficiency at completing mundane tasks, cities connected to the Internet of Things could succeed in relieving our stress and help us cherish the present moment.
We spend hours a day with our buds. Not buds as in friends. Buds as in earbuds.
As of 2017, the average American spent over 32 hours a week (roughly 69 days a year) in musical occupation. Ray Bradbury dubbed them “Seashells” in his novel Fahrenheit 451 years before their invention, a device offering an “electronic ocean of sound (…) coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind.”
Bradbury understood the impacts of technology on thinking habits decades before it became the phenomenon it is today. His so-called “unsleeping mind” is becoming one of the world’s newest health concerns. In the New York Times article An Ugly Toll of Technology readers are asked, “Do you sometimes think about reaching for the fast-forward button, only to realize that life does not come with a remote control?”. The immediacy of today’s digital technology combined with disproportionate use of the Internet causes impatience, absentmindedness and impulsivity.
Existing in the moment and enjoying the little things in life makes life more worth living.
Psychologist Nancy Colier explains that “the mind is an impulsive beast that has to be fed continuously”. Dissatisfaction or boredom creates discomfort, and the vast potential of the Internet allows us to change the channel with ease, constantly feeding our brains with shiny new information.
The Face of Reality
Many prefer to envelop themselves in an ‘alternative’ present moment, and the amount of people who take advantage of this option is expected to rise exponentially. The number of virtual reality users is predicted to grow from 90 million in 2017 to 171 million in 2018. Jeff Rayner, CEO of a VR startup, explains that “the virtual world you ‘play’ in is customized and thus more utopian than the real world”. High quality virtual reality will offer increasingly sophisticated experiences for those who see themselves as needing a break from reality.
We have to face the facts. As long as technology continues to be the highly profitable industry it is today, the major role it plays in our lives will continue to expand.
Make No Mistake: Technology is Good
What if we could enrich the present moment with technology, and get a chance to make real life feel like the utopian worlds of virtual reality games? Technology is a reflection of human discovery and growing intelligence, and we can learn to make it as beneficial an invention as possible.
Benefits of the IoT
The rapidly expanding network of physical objects known as the Internet of Things enables technology to collect and exchange data about you. It also gives machines the ability to complete monotonous work more quickly, analyze mass amounts of data to apply to business decisions, and grow smarter over time — presenting prospective life improvements.
The growing Internet of Things could become a sort of central nervous system that makes cities “smart”, and in turn smart cities will contribute to data streams. The more technology is integrated into our lives, the more data the IoT can collect and use to improve our lives.
Smart Cities Have a Lot to Offer
A few aspects of smart cities already implemented include green roads, roofs and walls, maps of street lights, road collisions, parking and other data, and driverless minibus services.
The city of Songdo, South Korea, is known as the world’s first smart city. By mixing traditional Korean culture with eco-friendly modernism, Songdo provides an example of how smart cities can adapt to and cooperate with the culture we are familiar with today.
The innovations mentioned above are only the things that people have come up with so far. The boundless nature of human imagination will undoubtedly present a colorful variety of devices aimed towards improving the everyday experience.
For a virtual reality tour of what smart cities might look like, click below.
Imagine
Imagine you wake up to the sensation of your smart pillow gently buzzing, instead of hearing an obnoxious phone alarm. The smell of fresh pancakes leads you to the kitchen; your smart stove has just finished making breakfast. When you leave for work, the smart door locks automatically behind you, and you see your house lights blink off. The glowing guides in the sidewalk direct you towards the nearest available smart bike.
Having a home and city that essentially acts as a mother in your adult life may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the important thing is that in this “smart life” scenario, you efficiently avoided the most hectic moments of your morning — giving you the potential to decrease stress and anxiety and direct more energy towards focusing on the present moment. Allowing ourselves to rely on smart technology to take care of routine responsibilities could help us forget the little worries, give us time to think more complex thoughts and focus on the activities that make us happy.
If we embrace technology and respect its capabilities instead of abusing them, we could succeed in transforming the real world into the ‘utopia’ that people are currently seeking by living through technology like social media, virtual worlds and other internet mediums.
REFLECTION
My first expectations for this class were to “learn how the Internet affects human health and why we are addicted to it”. Over the weeks to follow, I learned a great deal more about human dependence upon the Internet than I had anticipated. I also learned about things I hadn’t even realized existed, like the Internet of Things, the implications of hacking it, and how it can help us build smarter cities.
At first, taking this class only seemed to be opening my eyes to the negative capabilities of the Internet. I worried about Net Neutrality and ISPs, sentient machines, my technology “listening” to me, and being unwillingly integrated into the IoT. But as the course progressed, I learned to analyze the pros and cons of Internet advancements and Internet participation, and how I can control my level of involvement in our digital society.
I have developed a personal goal to monitor the emotional and intellectual impact that the Internet has on me and have begun to use that to limit my Internet use accordingly. Simultaneously, I have established a growing appreciation for the rapidly advancing nature of the Internet. The Internet can no longer be lumped in with unhealthy addictions, likened to junk food and smoking cigarettes. It is a multifaceted progression that deserves to be carefully categorized, recognized for all of its components and respected as the volatile collection of connections that it is.
The aspect of this course that I appreciated most was how we were encouraged to discuss and debate criticisms of the Internet with our classmates. I noticed myself taking the topics out of the classroom and prodding my close friends and family for their thoughts. This course has given me the tools to heighten my awareness of the complexity of the internet and to anticipate the skills I will need to stay sharp in an increasingly tech-centric world. In addition, I hope to take it upon myself to help others realize that our society is shifting digitally, and that their future success likely depends on their ability to adapt to these accelerated technological advancements.
Doing research on the Internet of Things and Smart Cities made me want to stop learning about these topics at first — the idea of such drastic change to today’s society is scary, after all. But as I continued pursuing information about the IoT and its connection to cities, I began to understand how important it is that we stay updated on advancements and tech news. Whether we like it or not, society is changing, and we will only be able to make our adaption comfortable if we expect what is coming.
