You see in the movies when it is based in the future. There are hover cars, houses that talk to you and we might even see a couple of weird aliens that live in harmony with us. Is this all a myth? I think not!! The future is coming!
Here I thought I was getting to know and be comfortable with the terms of DIGC202… Then this thing had to come along! THE INTERNET OF THINGS!! (iot)..
So from what I can gather iot relates to the advanced connecting of everything from your mood to your door locks to a network. There are billions of iot devices and this number will continue to grow in the future.
The amount of money that the iot is worth is massive! It is predicted to be worth 15 billion dollars by 2020. This is such a big money maker, and it is continuing to grow. So tell me… how do you feel that soon we may be rely on a machine to do everything?!? Deborah Lupton was right when se used the term ‘human machine’!
I found Lupton’s discussion about the Body-Machine metaphor very interesting. It comes from the definitions that are made for the ‘quantified self’ that refers to humans as a machine through the use of terms. The example, which is used in this weeks reading by Lupton is perfect to describe the metaphor. It looks at definitions from such sites as Wikipedia of a quantified self. Wikipedia: ‘The Quantified Self is a movement to incorporate technology into data acquisition on aspects of a person’s daily life in terms of inputs (e.g., food consumed, quality of surrounding air), states (e.g., mood, arousal, blood oxygen levels), and performance (mental and physical)”. The terms used in this definition literally describe us as some sort of machine.
But I want to go back to these cows that Ted mentioned in the lecture because this is where I go crazy!! I am from a farm and often we loose animals unexpectedly and each animal you loose, the more money you loose. This is genius. You can put biochip transponders in the animal to tell when a cow is ill, needs vaccinations etc. It is funny that we also track our body! We watch out moods, sex life and eating patterns except we can talk and express ourselves.
Technology is playing a key role in our everyday life! But if people are still experimenting on it why shouldn’t we enjoy the fruits of technology and the Internet? The Internet of Things is a key example of how we are moulding our lives around the life cycle of technology. But are we ready for this kind of living? Does everyone have a choice?