Sunday, April 26, 2009

Ripples

About 7 years ago, when the Playstation 2 came out, there was a lot of advertisement about the future of gaming. The Playstation 2 was going to be the most "high-tech" game system. The graphics, story lines, and game play would be much more interactive. It was only the beginning.
In class, we talked about how Hayles said that we are separate from technology and that we will always be. She thinks that we work together as one and that a computer can do the things that a human can. The human can experience the emotional cues that are sometime needed to make a task successful. I learned in my psychology class that too much emotion leads to rationalization but too little, can lead to poor decision making. But what if one day, maybe not soon but in the future, we become part of the computer? Take a look at this clip that came out roughly seven years ago.




Though it may seem too far away to ever happen and even unreal, it really is not. As fast as technology changes, one day we could see something like this PS9. My point is that I believe that Hayles is right about how we should be more cautious. I believe that we are cyborgs and that one day the machine may entirely take over. Just think about how we process words in our head. Each letter is pulled from our long term memory to make a word and then say it out loud. This is cued by a stimuli that we are programed to respond to. We think like computers already, even to make simple text. We created the computer based on how we process information.

When I take a look at this video, I think about the loss of our humanity. This technology makes stepping outside a little harder when you can step into a virtual world and do anything you can imagine. I believe it is already happening. It kind of reminds me of the matrix and how they were"prisoners" in their made up world. Where will it stop and will we ever lose the distinction between real and virtual like they did? It's like ripples in the water: they start out small and rapidly expand.