TECHNOLOGY – THE DOUBLE EDGE SWORD

There is no doubt in my mind that technology has completely changed the world we live in and every sphere of life from health to transportation to public safety, consumer products, home furnishings, recreation, environment, agriculture to even baby food we can appreciate the change. We are forecasting natural calamities well in time and doing smarter and quicker reconstructions and rehabilitation, preventing diseases and epidemics and reaching distant planets and distant people with effortless ease. But is it sugar and spice and everything nice?  Unfortunately not so and we do not have to look beyond the group of school going teenagers in our morning bus. Their identity, the idea that defines each and every one of them, could be facing an unprecedented crisis. The hooded and wired creatures who have developed the unique art of living two lives – a real and a virtual one are confused about  who they are, what they do and how they behave.  This crisis could reshape how we interact with each other, alter what makes us happy, and modify our capacity for reaching our full potential as individuals. The human brain today is under threat from the modern world. 

IBM, the technology giant that gave the world the personal computer, is known for its bold, technology-related predictions on the future, and it recently came up with a new list, detailing what it thinks the world will look like in just five years’ time.

The company predicts that there will be huge advances in artificial intelligence, ultra-powerful telescopes, smart sensors and smart medical devices. All of these advances put together will benefit many different fields, ranging from healthcare to the environment, as well as allowing humanity to understand both the Earth and the universe to a degree that simply wasn’t possible before.

You must keep in mind that these predictions are based on technology and research that’s happening in the present, and that there’s no way of knowing what other technologies might emerge, or developments be made, in the intervening time.  I will dwell on 5 new technological predictions only:

1. Speech giving insight into our mental health: While even today it is possible to gauge whether a person is bored, flustered, distracted, or miserable by the way he/she speaks rapid advancements are being made in computer processing that means speech analysis is about to allow us a far deeper insight into the human condition than ever before. IBM predicts that we’ll be able to use our writing and speech as indicators of our mental health and physical well being by 2022. Thus we may be able to spot Parkinson’s disease much earlier than previously possible thanks to a mobile app. This app would send relevant data to a computing cloud, where calculations could be done on the spot, allowing for treatment to be conducted as early as possible. Along the same lines a team from the University of Southern California has built a program that can detect variations from normal speech patterns and identify signs of depression.

2. Enhanced vision: Our eyes are a scientific marvel which has not yet been reproduced by humans. However their power could soon be eclipsed by tiny cameras combined with formidably powerful processing power, allowing us to see more than ever before. In addition to the visible spectrum, we’ll be able to see microwave, millimeter waves, and infrared images through devices that’ll be small enough to fit into our pockets or clip onto our sunglasses. This will instantly allow us to be able to see if food is safe to eat, or give self-driving cars the ability to navigate through difficult weather conditions much more easily.

3. We will be able to understand the Earth in infinite detail: We have already used apps like Google Earth, which harnesses the power of satellites orbiting the Earth. This is just the beginning of what is possible with the technology. The next step is going to be “macroscope” systems which will allow the combination of all the complex data on the Earth so that it can be analyzed from all kinds of new perspectives predict everything from climate change events, to determining the best food distribution methods to communities around the globe.

4. “Labs on a chip” are set to cause a medical revolution: With each passing year, computing technology continues to shrink and gets ever more powerful, and this is already having a significant impact on the medical industry. In the near future, it’s likely that we will actually have the ability to diagnose illnesses or diseases at home, catching them earlier than ever before. Scientists are envisaging a “medical lab on a chip” – nanotechnology health devices that will trace invisible cues in our bodily fluids- tears, blood, urine and sweat, letting us know immediately in the event that we need to see a doctor. It’ll be like having our very own biochemist tucked away in our pocket. Early diagnosis will make a massive difference to the success of treatments for cancer or Parkinson’s, among many others. By 2022, a sleep tracker or fitness band will be able to feed data into an artificial intelligence system, in turn allowing us to access detailed information on how to improve our health. It will also remotely alert our doctor to any signs of impending disease by smart telemedicine.

5. Smart sensors will detect environmental pollution almost instantly: In the same way that a smart tracker could spot the early signs of disease, smart sensors in the ground, or attached to drones, could sniff out pollutants in the air without having to transfer any samples back to a lab. A practical application of this could be to contain leaks of the notorious global warming gas, methane. This idea has massive potential for the reduction of pollution and waste in the event that something goes wrong.

But our modern brains also have to adapt to other 21st century intrusions, some of which, such as prescribed drugs like Ritalin and Prozac, and some widely available illegal drugs like cannabis and heroin. Electronic devices – cell phones and computer games and pharmaceutical drugs all have an impact on the micro- cellular structure and complex biochemistry of our brains. And that, in turn, affects our personality, our behavior and our characteristics. In short, the modern world could well be altering our human identity. Our brain, which invented the computer, the World Wide Web and the artificial intelligence, is itself` now under such widespread attack from the modern world, that there's a danger that that it’s cherished sense could be diminished or even lost.

Already, it's pretty clear that the screen-based, two dimensional world that so many teenagers - and a growing number of adults - choose to inhabit is producing changes in behaviour. Attention spans are shorter, personal communication skills are reduced and there's a marked reduction in the ability to think abstractly. This games-driven generation interpret the world through screen-shaped eyes. It's almost as if something hasn't really happened until it's been posted on Facebook, Bebo or YouTube.

I would urge you to imagine that if someone could be fitted with a cochlear implant (devices that convert sound waves into electronic impulses and enable the deaf to hear) and a skull-mounted micro- chip that converts brain waves into words what is only left is to connect the two systems to a wireless network or an app and the next thing you know, we are reading each other’s minds! Will that not be dangerously close to insanity?

Our changes in brain structure and our higher thoughts and feelings are incontrovertibly linked. Have you imagined what changes might long stints playing violent computer games bring about? Are we breeding the future Jihadi generation? Coinciding with the moment when technology and pharmaceutical companies are finding ever more ways to have a direct influence on the human brain with pleasure drugs and video games, pleasure is becoming the sole be-all and end-all of many lives, especially among the young. We could be raising a hedonistic generation who live only in the thrill of the computer-generated moment, and are in distinct danger of detaching themselves from what the rest of us would consider the real world.

This is a trend that worries me profoundly.