Vocal Cords: Next on the Obsolete List

Ambient Corp. recently unveiled the next big breakthrough in speech recognition - recognizing words you don't even vocalize! A sophisticated neckband detects signals intended for the vocal cords and sends them wirelessly to a computer that then vocalizes them for you. This, of course, has astonishing potential for those who have lost the ability to use their vocal cords, whether through injury or illness. My only concern is for those people who have already substituted dating for chat rooms and outside activity and socializing for online RPG's. Physicality and sociality are already out the window, and it looks like speech in general is next!

Family History and the Information Age

I believe that a society’s true motivations are revealed by how it utilizes the available technology. When you search Google for “genealogy OR family history” you instantly get 457,000,000 results (as of February 6th, 2008). Searching for “American Idol” only returns 31,200,000 results. Maybe it’s the search for identity, the desire to find familial connections, or the simple hope to know that we’re not alone, but something drives us to build and utilize tools for researching family history. Whatever the case, it feels good to know that genealogy is more important than American Idol.

Technology Priorities

When I saw the headline “Researchers Develop Bionic Contact Lens” I immediately thought of the coke-bottle glass wearing individuals with complex eye issues finally receiving relief through the magic of technology. And yet the focus of the article, and seemingly the research itself, was not on improving vision but on taking gaming and personal computing to the next level. Indeed, the only sentence to the contrary came near the end, “Maybe the technique could even create sight aids for visually-impaired people.” I’m all for cool technology and sweet new games, but our priorities are getting fatally skewed.

Knowledge vs. Wisdom

Technology deteriorates wisdom. As text messaging and email become more popular, communication suffers. As the knowledge of civilizations becomes accessible with the click of a mouse, individual thought vanishes. I have a wealth of knowledge attained from movies and T.V. shows, and it is not uncommon for me to say something funny and my wife respond with “What is that from?” Granted, I often have the answer ready, but it is something of a reality check when something funny is actually an original thought. People are smart and capable of learning vast amounts of information, but when people spend all of their time taking in data – Googling, checking YouTube, crawling Wikipedia for hours on end – one must wonder how much time they actually spend thinking.