Category: Britt

1a. Sleep and Capitalism

Ever had a long day and all you can think about was collapsing into a blissful slumber in your warm, comfy bed. Not having to think or do anything except relax and recharge? What if you got home to find your bed gone? Lights are bright and music is blaring and there is no way to turn them off. How will you get a good night’s sleep in these conditions? What if this goes on for months? For some it has.

Sleep deprivation has been use as a torture technique for centuries. In the Pentagon’s ‘First Special Interrogation Plan’ Mohammed al-Qahtani was one of many prisoners to be subjected to this form of torture. He was incarcerated for two months in a brightly lit, tiny cubicle, in which he was unable to lie down. Loud music was broadcast around the clock. The affects of sleep deprivation in the short-term include psychosis, and after several weeks neurological damage begins to occur (Crary 2013).

The statement ‘The denial of sleep is the violent dispossession of self by external force, the calculated shattering of an individual’ (Crary 2013) allows us to see that Crary views the forceful removal of sleep as the removal of a basic requirement of human life.

For about eight years the US Defense Department has been funding studies of the white-crowned sparrow. This bird can stay awake for up to seven days during their migration period. The aim of this research is to discover ways to allow human beings to go without sleep while continuing to function productively and efficiently. The initial objective is the creation of the sleepless solider. This study is one of many in the quest to gain mastery over sleep, including neurochemicals, gene therapy and transcranial magnetic stimulation (Crary 2013).

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If this research amounts to anything in the future I believe this technology could also be marketed to scientists, surgeons, shift workers and even students – anyone who is fighting against a deadline or needs to stay awake and alert. However, as a species we may need to think about the reasons why we are doing this and the long-term consequences this may have on society and individuals. Maybe we need to think: are we meddling too much with nature?

References

Britt Neech

1b. Human technology relationships

 

In my opinion, the future of human technology relation lies in the development of wearable technology. There are already many wearable tech gadgets on the market. The Fitbit, worn on the wrist or around the neck, comes to mind as a current everyday wearable technology. This gadget automatically tracks your steps, distance, calories burned, hourly activity, how long and how well you sleep and will even wake you up peacefully with a silent alarm (Fitbit 2016). In a similar category lies the Apple Watch, which has features that allow you to make contactless transactions, track your physical activity, health and wellbeing. It even comes with an app that reminds you to relax and breathe (Apple 2016). With the release of the iPhone 7 came the cordless earphones Apple AirPods. The AirPods change our interaction with technology by removing hindrances that many users found clunky or inconvenient and allow easy integration into our everyday lives (Sarah Emerson 2016).

Google Glass, unveiled in 2012, is a pair of glasses that allowed users to view the time, send photos, receive messages and many other features traditionally associated with mobile phones, right in front of your eyes. This product ceased production in 2015 due to its poor battery life, and the fact that is was ‘a product plagued by bugs’. Google Glass also raised security concerns; with people becoming concerned they would be recorded during private moments (Bilton 2015).

And who said wearable tech was limited to the outside of your body? Some people have also gone as far as human micro chipping. Co-founder and CEO of Epicenter, Patrick Mesterton, explains that they offer the opportunity for their employees to have a rice grain sized microchip implanted under their skin via a syringe. The procedure only takes a few seconds and requires no anesthetic (Funnell 2016). At Epicenter, they use a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip that allows employees to digitalise professional information and communicate with devices. This includes both personal devices, such as a mobile phone or computer and public devices like printers and lock systems. This process aims to streamline the workplace. It is currently illegal to force someone to be micro chipped; it is an entirely voluntary process (Funnell 2016). Many find this kind of technological progress unnerving and even frightening.

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‘Progress lies deeply embedded in the culture of science. Knowledge is thought to be progressive, accumulative, and qualitatively on a trajectory of either evolutionary or revolutionary improvement. And insofar as technologies are today associated with science and its culture, the same belief in progressivism is often held. That is why contemporary doubts about technological progress cut so deeply’ (Ihde 1993, p.62).

Only time will tell how far and in what way technology will progress and how this will affect human’s relationships with technology.

References

Britt Neech

1d. Primary Research

My interview was conducted as an informal discussion with a friend, Brooke Atkinson. Brooke is a Biomedical Science and Business student at Queensland University of Technology.

When I asked Brooke the very broad question ‘What is your view of the future?’ she quickly shot back a one-word response: robots. Brooke speculates that the technology that is currently being integrated in to everyday life will rapidly expand, taking over and transforming many of the industries we know today. She references the self-checkouts at supermarkets as the beginning of technology replacing humans in the workplace. She predicts that robots will take over all manual labour jobs and only a few very personal professions, such as hairdressing and psychology, will remain human focused. As for the humans that have been replaced, they will now find jobs designing, servicing and repairing the very objects that have replaced them. Because of the rise in technology in the services industry, Brooke predicts that future generations will have less developed social skills. Most social interactions will occur on social media, through technology instead of face-to-face communication.

As a student of Biomedical Science, Brooke suggests that medical advancements such as finding preventions and cures for diseases will increase the human lifespan. She goes on to say that this will cause overpopulation issues that will result in increased joblessness and homelessness. The growing population comes with the need for more housing facilities. Brooke speculates that there will be an increase in high-rise buildings and apartment living, with only the very wealthy being able to afford to live in houses. The crowded property market will see people settling for smaller dwellings and the lower class will be forced to share homes with extended family. Brooke also mentions that the overpopulation will create a stress on resources. She predicts that if food supplies are depleting people will start growing their own food, as it would be a cheaper and more reliable option.

I asked Brooke about her view on the future of sleep in order to reflect on what I have learnt and explored this semester in the Sleep Stream of Interdisciplinary Lab A. Brooke thinks that the desire to make the most of our waking lives will result in the invention of a medicine which will allow humans to sleep for less time without the adverse affects of sleep deprivation. She ponders that this would allow humans to be more productive but wonders if this could have adverse affects on the environment combined with the overpopulation problem. How much stress can Earth take from its inhabitants? Brooke wonders if people will use their extra hours of wakefulness to attempt to find a solution to the environmental issues that will be increased due to the enormous usage of technology and overpopulation.

Britt Neech

1c. A review of a future scenario

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey proposes a future scenario based on the spacecraft, Discovery One, in outer space. In this scenario there are five humans on board Discovery One and one computer, which controls everything on board. Before they left Earth, three of the human crewmembers on Discovery One were put in a state of hibernation, in which they only breathe once a minute. The computer, known as HAL, is capable of speech, speech recognition, facial recognition, natural language processing, lip reading, art appreciation, interpreting and displaying emotion, automated reasoning, and playing chess (Kolker, R, 2006). Throughout the film, HAL becomes more and more self aware and paranoid resulting in the murder of the three hibernating crewmen and the second-in-command Dr. Frank Poole. The film ends with the remaining crewman Dave Bowman lobotomising HAL.

Stanley Kubrick has helped viewers visualise this scenario through the set of the spaceship and the space suits worn by the characters as well as the soundtrack and cinematography. The massive surface of HAL shows the power and significance it holds and its eye-like camera assists viewers in viewing this machine as somewhat human.

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Even though it’s prophetic year has passed, 2001: A Space Odyssey still speaks to us about our past and future, our relationships to the unknowns of the universe, and cautions us about the ways in which we deal with the technologies we invent (Kolker, R, 2006). Video call has developed drastically since this film was made in 1968. In June 2016 founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg live streamed a video call with Tim Peake and other astronauts on the International Space Station, in the first live Facebook video to be broadcast from outer space (Telegraph Reporters 2016). In regards to artificial intelligence, programs like Siri and Cortana, which use voice recognition intelligence, are already very advanced. There was an incident when a twitter chatbot account, TayTweets, created by Microsoft as an experiment in ‘conversational understanding’ became hostile. TayTweets learned from messages tweeted to her by humans and essentially regurgitated whatever it was that was said to her. (Vincent 2016). Many of the ideas in 2001: A Space Odyssey have already become or are becoming reality.

STEEP Analysis

Social

  • Humans and AI communicate with each other
  • Video chat is a huge part of human to human communication
  • Humans have limited social interaction and seems to be only for formalities rather than enjoyment

Technological

  • Trust in AI to control important space missions (human lives and a lot of money at risk)
  • Voice recognition to control/instruct spacecraft
  • AI becomes uncontrollable by humans and commits murderer

Environmental

  • Environmental cost of creating massive computers like HAL
  • Gravity is different to that on Earth (humans able to walk up side down and sideways, as if the outside shell of the ship is holding them down)

Economic

  • Space travel/missions are expensive
  • Investment in AI technology is expensive

Political

  • Explaining to the world and mission sponsors why the space mission failed would be difficult

References

Britt Neech