Wear Are We Going?

I resisted buying my first cell phone.  “I have voicemail,” I reasoned, “why does someone need to call my body?”

Thirteen years later my body can be tracked via my smartphone, and through a host of other data mining devices, cameras and computers.  This week, Gigaom.com ran an article called “Where is Wearable TechHeaded?”  The author, Rahul Patel, discusses the potential of wearable tech describing “a small adhesive strip that can collect intimate biological data and tell your smartphone that you need to apply sunscreen or hydrate,” or, “devices that monitor health and behavior – human or animal.”

Organizations already scour social media to gain background data on potential employees or monitor current ones.  What happens when the biological information of each individual is linked into a digital data network?  Will organizations know an employee or potential employee is sick before they do?  Can discrimination become undetectable through background algorithms and data mining of wearable tech?

It is interesting that in the interactive Web 2.0 data mining seems to go in one direction.  The masses are unable to access and utilize monitoring data with any degree of similarity to large organizations.  Data mining is neither two-way, nor is it transparent.  Perhaps it should be part of the public record.  If not, we may be relinquishing a degree of control on our own fates that we might never regain.

Make A 'Bot

Makerbot has introduced The Digitizer, a 3D scanner that can image real world objects and then print them out on a 3D printer.  3D printing has already sparked a fair share of conversation.  Some hail the benefits to the individual, of gaining more control over creativity, while others point out the dangers of being able to “print” firearms, or the economic implications of manufacturing obsolescence.

However, of greater concern to me is not the specific device, but the runaway speed of technology and the growing divide between it and consumers and manufacturers ability to understand its effects and implications.  Countless amounts of data have been generated by consumers of technology, particularly since the introduction of Web 2.0 and social networks in the mid-2000’s, yet we are just beginning to realize the extent and implications of data mining and its effect on our privacy and relationships.

How then are we to understand the issues associated with being able to replicate three-dimensional objects through something as simple as a printer?  How long before the products are not crude, plastic replicas, but something that resembles actual manufacturing – or perhaps living organisms?  Just about any tool can be used for benefit or for harm.  The danger is not necessarily in the tool itself, but in the growing gap between cutting edge technology and society’s ability to properly study and understand its implications.