Professor MacDonald’s presentation was based off the movie ‘Until the End of the World’ by Wim Wenders, which we watched the week before. The film was made in 1991 but is set at the turn of the millennium. Consequently, futuristic technology is a key feature of the film’ setting and includes mobiles with FaceTime capabilities, tablets and machines that can see your dreams. This brings up quite a lot of questions regarding futuristic technology, which Professor MacDonald discussed.
Does technology define our humanity, and if so, how?
This question is quite loaded and very much depends on one’s definition of ‘humanity’. I think it’s more accurate to say that humanity defines technology. After all, necessity is the mother of invention, so we design exactly what we decide humanity needs. We also define our own perception of technology. In the 1970s, plastic was considered a new and exciting material. These days, it almost has connotations of evil and pollution. The material itself hasn’t changed, but the way we’ve used it has.
Does what we make define what we think?
A big theme of the movie was technology becoming addictive. Personally, I’m not a fan of the narrative that technology is ruining our lives and making us all antisocial drones. Indeed, I feel it does quite the opposite and has aided in socialisation and communication. The above photographs were taken 80 years apart, and yet are strikingly similar. If the phones haven’t made us antisocial, maybe humans are just like that anyway.
What’s the gap between technological promise and technological reality?
This question reminded me of the Hype Cycle for emerging technologies. I really love this graph as it perfectly illustrates how technologies are developed with huge expectations in mind, before we realise that perhaps these technologies aren’t as powerful as we had initially hoped. In this way, many currently developing technologies have huge expectations that will likely soon fall flat. Having said that, 100 years ago, no one would have ever dreamed of communication at the speed of light yet here we are. Who knows where we’ll be in another 100 years.
Morven
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