Tech. Nostradamus

Our entanglement with technology is extremely tight and extensive. The future will only lead towards more advancements from transportation to communication and it will lead to a stronger dependance on technology (as depicted in Wall-E). The world is already at a tipping point, but I will show you a glimpse of what is to come.

Fat Holder
At present our society is facing an obesity epidemic, which has forced innovators to develop a new device that will help overweight individuals during surgery. This device uses suction to lift up the patient's belly. During surgery a patient's breathing can be disrupted by their own weight, and this device helps solve that problem.

This is a completely ridiculous technology! This device is meant to serve as a tool to help with a problem that has been attributed to the use of certain technologies. The average person spends about 6 hours a day in front of a screen a day. With a lack of exercise the chance of becoming obese is astronomical. Being that this cannot be changed, people created this absurd device.

Cerebral Connection
Something else on the vast horizon is the ability to use a computer via brain waves.

"The devices works by first isolating the brain waves they filter out electrical interference from man-made appliances and physical movements, such as blinking and the grinding of teeth. Then they map the brain waves to mental states, emotions or thoughts using proprietary algorithms."- Alastair Gee (bit-tech.net)

This technology will only deepen our need for constant electronic stimulation. Right now this technology is still a little choppy, but researchers believe that it will be perfected in the next 5 years.

Reflection
I don't know what the future has in store for us as a society. I like to think that we will somehow return to nature, but that is the boy scout in me. We need not enter panic mode yet, but with some of the above technologies I fear that we are treading on thin ice. One day we will look back and say, "I wish this never would have existed." Anyway, I have posted a short dramatization of what Microsoft thinks the future will look like. Enjoy!

These Are My Confessions...

Image reproduced from http://aarontwells.files.wordpress.com/

In this day and age being attached to every facet of communication technologies has become a norm. We have devices that can connect us to email, social media, text messaging, and voice/video calls. I think that these devices serve a very useful purpose, but I also have an urge to be constantly checking for updates as if they will disappear if I don't check them right away. Right now I have checked Facebook, Twitter, my email and sent/received five texts. I am not the only one, people everywhere has experienced this feeling here is why.

Some researchers say that resisting the urge to check a social networking update is harder to resist then accepting a drink at a bar. Part of this might be that the implications for drinking can be felt physically whereas appeasing checking an update has no immediate affects. Additionally, when we power through the day and resist checking updates, our willingness to feed our urges increases, so by the end of the day we want to gorge ourselves on electronic stimulation. One student attests,

"I became bulimic with my media; I starved myself for a full 15 hours and then had a full-on binge." -Unnamed Student

Courtesy of www.heraldsun.com

Another instance that I can claim guilty as charged to is when, sometimes, whilst with friends I feel it necessary to check my phone twenty times, when the people I care about talking to are surrounding me. This is a common thing amongst students, especially those who are considered extroverts or social butterflies. In a survey, more than half of the respondents would be willing to give up exercise before their mobile devices. I'm sorry, but if you're willing to give an essential part of your well-being just to have a phone there is problem. Just for another shocking statistic from survey, about 1/3 of the respondents would be willing to give up sex, 80% of which were females. Yikes. I'll leave it at that.

We are a society that is glued to our external social interactions from many different sources. The need to know what everyone is doing at all times, also called ambient awareness, is having an adverse instillment of paranoia and craving for the social stimulation. I can say that I have done the same thing, minus the willingness to give a part of myself, and I am not afraid to admit that I sometimes teeter between consumer and addict. To combat this I will be taking part of a really sweet movement similar to this one where I will spend a weekend and avoid the use of all technologies.

Courtesy of www.causes.com/unplugging_pledge

Your Brain On Tech...

Courtesy of www.topnews.in

All of the technologies we have are meant to make our lives much simpler. We can accomplish many tasks simultaneously, find information quickly, and communicate almost synchronically with a multitude of devices. This is all well and good, but did anyone consider that this could reshape how our brain operates?

There many people who claim that the advancement of technology, as much as it helps us, also makes us more dependent on it. Being dependent on a printer to print documents or that a computer turns on is not what I am getting at.  The fact that now we are so reliant on google to answer our questions, social networking sites to maintain our relationships, and our mobile devices to be in constant contact with people at all times, is changing the way our brain functions.

Take for instance how people store every email they receive, even though it is not necessary. Researchers claim that this is preventing many of us from letting go, causing us to retain many old and unnecessary memories at the expense of making new ones. 

"Everything is saved these days, he notes, from the meaningless e-mail sent after a work lunch to the angry online exchange with a spouse." -Dr. Aboujaoude

Courtesy of www.flikr.com

In the same context, when a person stores 500 photos on a site like Flikr instead of just having a few memorable, it takes away the highlights of a trip and replaces them with irrelevant candid images.

In contrast, let's take social networking sites. A person may have ,on average, 190 friends on Facebook. Of those 190 friends could that person pick every single one of those people in a crowd, I very much doubt it. I think that our reliance on Facebook to tell us who are friends are is affecting our ability to remember the the simplest social interactions we have. I know from personal experience, I have immediately added someone on Facebook just to make sure I didn't forget who they were later on.

"Oh don't worry, I'll Google it!" Everybody's favorite response to "I don't know." Yes I can attest to saying this on many occasions and I feel stupid every time. Google is making it so that our brains are tricked into changing how we remember things. Instead of actually retaining the information we sought after, our brain says, "Nah that's okay we can just look it up again another time..." There is a very good depiction of this phenomenon,  where the idea of brain plasticity is the reason for this. This concept, in a nutshell, means that our brain is constantly rewiring itself to adapt to our environment. In this case our brains are slowly reprogramming to not remember facts as well and limiting our storage capabilities.

We rely on technology to get through everyday life. It tells us where to go, what to do, and how to do it. The problem is that our brains are being tricked into limiting how much we actually need to remember day to day. This is your brain on tech.

Giles of the Online Gamer

Courtesy of www.uproxx.com

Many teens are subscribed to mass multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPG). Some examples of MMORPGs include: World of Warcraft (WoW), Starcraft, League of Legends and countless others that can be found on online gaming sites like Kongregate. In my opinion, these games have played a crucial role in the evolution of technology addiction in the way that many of these games became a world wide phenomenon. In numerous cases teens and young adults are diagnosed with a technology addiction, because of their online game playing.

What the experts say...
Psychiatrists associate gambling as a closely related addiction to video games. The commonality between the two are the effects on the brain. Web MD,  the only source for I go to for medical advice,  claims that both gambling and gaming produce a significant amount dopamine in the brain. That is not the whole story though. Psychiatrists also say that another element of this addiction is the draw to being a dominant figure in a virtual world as opposed to the way they are in reality.

Courtesy of www.news.cnet.com

The alter ego...
The notion of an addiction to virtuality can be traced to the early years of online games like WoW. I can remember back in grade school that many of my friends had access to this game and spent hours after school playing it and often skipping homework to keep on playing. This was a time before social networking, smartphones or broadband, which in retrospect must have made gaming tough. What I am getting at is that these games were but mere stepping stones into a virtual world where people across the globe get sucked into. This Frontline video talks about a man's fight to manage his excessive gaming habits as a teenager.

#Trending...
Now more recently, I have found that subscriptions to MMORPGs has been on a steady decline. In this BBC article I learned that as of last June WoW has lost 1.1 million subscribers. Now unfortunately, this is not because people are quitting their gaming habits. It is on the contrary where the gamers are paying more attention to console-based games, so essentially the problem persists.

Sweet so where do we go from here...
Video game addiction is an avenue where technology that can benefit us by providing some sort outlet for stress or other emotions. However it has the potential to be misused or be used a escape rope from reality. As many can probably agree, video games were one of the first areas of technology to be considered addictive and from the looks of it, I feel that this is only a growing problem.

How to Be the Philip Morris of the e-World

Everyone likes a good plot twist, so let's talk about how one can find fame and fortune by creating new media that some claim is as addictive as cigarettes! The media from the top of my head that fit this category are: Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga Games. All of these different avenues have successfully built an empire on creating their own pop-culture, in which people just get sucked into. In addition, these outlets have actually teamed up to an extent and created a multi-billion dollar industry of user-generated content and a couple of online games.

First, let's talk about Facebook. You can either look at their company page or continue with my grueling synopsis. Facebook is site that allows users to update their friends with "statuses", check-in to local places, post photos and videos, and play games with friends. There is a lot more to it than that, but I'll save the pleasantries. Let's look at it this way, Facebook relies on its users to generate all of the content that is displayed on our individual "feeds". We can decide who we see and who can see us, so its a very user-based application.

According the Facebook Newsroom there are over 845 million users floating around the Internet! The profit comes from a variety of services which include: advertising, Facebook Dollars, and an assortment of applications.

Courtesy of www.img.labnol.org

Last year Facebook raked in a profit of $3.7 billion!

Twitter is not quite as elaborate as Facebook. There aren't any games or ads perse, the idea is still somewhat the same. Users create the content that is shared with everyone in the Twitterverse, this includes text posts, links, photos, etc. Twitter allows for quick little blerbs to be seen by millions of people with the right subject tag, which are indicated by a pound sign (#). Posts with similar "hashtags" are clumped together until they become trend. These trends can range from current events to people posting about life in the 90's.

Zynga games, the company that brought us the plague of Farmville. I know many people who can attest to getting completely suck into this game to point where they were willing to pay for items in the game just to get an edge. As of late, the new Zynga bane of those with smartphones include games like Words with Friends, Hanging with Friends and of a day ago Draw Something. These games can be linked with Facebook, so basically Zynga get's free marketing from those who decide to invite their friends that do not already play the game, it's genius! Of course they offer a free version to get us hooked then keep blasting ads telling us to buy the full version of the game.

To me, we have put such an investment of our lives into these sites and games that its almost sickening and what's worse is that people are making money off our lost time. I may not agree that Facebook can lead to addiction, but it's become so ingrained into our culture that not connecting to these media is stigmatized. This new area of business is only predicted to grow and there is no telling when, we are the key to their success.

Below I posted a video feature about Draw Something the newest acquisition of Zynga Games.

You CAN put the phone down, you CAN close your computer. Managing your dependency of New Media.

I have said about three times now that I do not believe a person can be addicted to technology, like a person can be addicted to drugs, so I'm going to practice what I preach and show how technology dependency can be managed. I understand that it is really difficult not to be totally engrossed with devices as our society is "technology-saturated". There are numerous strategies ranging from psychological tests to simple lifestyle changes that can help cut a fault between you and the vast sea of technology.

I am a huge believer in self-help, where individuals are the key to their own success and the anchor to their failure. How about a nice do's and don't's list from The Do's and Don't's of 'Selective Availability':

DO:


• Establish time boundaries.
  
  College professors have worked this way for decades: “I only read email between noon and five PM,” one announced on the first day of class. While your own hours might be longer, you can set clear parameters. If you don’t want to check email after 10 PM, stick to it, and make sure that coworkers, clients, and other contacts are aware of this rule.


• Have an A-list.
  
  If you decide to only answer your phone half as often, make sure you’re answering it for the right half. Choose a few people – family, boss, business partner, etc – whose calls you will always answer. This prioritization will help you figure out who matters the most.


• Make your time count.
  
  Deciding to be selectively available doesn’t just affect you – it also affects the people you work with. If you want to spend less time on the phone, make the best of the time you do have.


DON’T:


• Be wishy-washy.
  
  Like with all goals, your plan will work better if you’re more specific. Saying “I am going to spend less time on email” is one thing, but saying “I am going to shut off my BlackBerry an hour before bed” is better. The more specific your guidelines, the more likely you’ll adhere to them.


• Update to the latest technology.
  
  Being a bit of a Luddite can work out for you if you’re suffering from technology overload. If your cell phone can’t juggle multiple calls, you have a really good reason not to make them.


• Answer your phone in the middle of sex. (DUH!)
  
  
  If you feel inclined to answer your phone during sex, you should ask yourself how good that sex really is.

This list gives a lot of common-sense type of suggestions, but ask yourself do you in fact have times setup for emails? Do you have time boundaries for phone calls or emails? I'm going to say probably not, and don't worry I said no to most of these as well, but I will be taking these tips to help balance my professional and private life to ensure happiness in all aspects of my life.

Well this all sounds fine and dandy, but at first I didn't feel like I needed to manage my usage of technology and so I looked up signs to look for, to determine whether I needed to take action. In an article, Fighting Back Against Technology Addiction the authors depict the following signs:

Addiction warning signs vary, but they include being preoccupied with thoughts of the Internet, using it longer than intended for increasing amounts of time, repeatedly making unsuccessful efforts to control use, and jeopardizing relationships, school or work to spend time online.

Okay, so we have that down and yes I do think the "jeopardizing relationships" bit is a little over dramatic, but I concur with the increased time spent with the internet and other devices, due to professional life. As I mentioned above, the reason people are becoming so tech dependent can be connected to our technology-saturated society in our career worlds and in our entertainment worlds. Back on track, I decided that it would be in my best interest to check if my usage of technology was overkill, so I took this test to determine my usage score.

Your score falls within the range of 20 to 49 and is within the average range. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.

Well you can imagine how satisfied I was with these results. It was pretty spot on, like I've said, I use new media for my career and it does take a lot of my time, but I am not completely engrossed with it. Using the tips I found I feel like I can limit my time online even further by setting up schedules where I am doing research, checking emails, etc. I hope that this strategic themed article can help my readers manage their tech usage and break through the hyperlink-fence of e-Abuse!

They Said I Need To Go To e-Rehab...

Right now you're staring at your screen, reading this blog while at the same time checking Facebook, news and waiting for Youtube to load. It's okay I'm not spying on you, so put down the phone, seriously though I'm just making assumptions, if you are in fact reaching for the phone I apologize I'm just a good guesser. Anyway, If you are jonesing for good ol'squirt of technology induced dopamine from any of the aforementioned outlets then this article can give you great insight.

Since the beginnings of the internet claims of addiction to technology soon followed and of course with every addiction there is a place to help treat it. Facilities for technology addiction have been popping up all over the world. In South Korea, a boot camp to help kids detach from video games, the internet and other electronic devices, which I saw in a PBS documentary Digital Nation, showed how kids and teens are being affected by the rise of advanced technology.

As many of us know, South Korea is a highly advanced country when it comes to technology, so to me it makes sense that this country is the one that is feeling the backlash of technology induced side effects. As I have mentioned before, I don't believe that people can categorize Technology Addiction as a dependency like alcoholism, but I can agree that the overuse of technology can be harmful to a person's well-being.



I like to use my roommate as an example. He is a stereotypical "gamer", he stays up almost all night playing computer games, then sleeps till 2 in the afternoon. This is everyday, so one can guess that he does not attend class or participate in campus activities. I try to get him involved by inviting to come hang out with some of my friends or just going out to a store. He enjoys going out, but the second we get back, he's on his computer.

It's really too bad, because I can see that his health is taking a slump and he wants to change, but still he reverts to his habits. Do I think he needs to go to rehab? No probably not, I think it's a matter of disconnecting for a few days and finding a regular routine. Though I have talked about rehab centers and their purpose I don't necessarily agree that it's necessary, but it can be helpful to get people on the right track to managing their use of technology.