In the words of Father Ted…

In the words of the infamous Father Ted “Down with this sort of thing!”

At the dinnertable two weeks ago my teenage son told me of a revolutionary visual aid that changes how we can ‘see’ the world. All hail Google Glass! Imagine my surprise to read an article during the week on the same subject in the Independent explaining the detrimental ramifications of such technology as expressed by social technology movement Stop the Cyborgs.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been trying to find examples of real life cyborg in today’s world. At the beginning of my reflection on cyborgs I questioned the need for the attachment of conscience in the creation of cyborg, hammered home by an unequivocal belief in the non-human component’s merger with the human body. Does Google Glass take such a melting of the two a step further? The technology has a social immersion aspect that not only has the potential to change how we see but possibly how we live.

“[t]he world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as in an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside.”(McLuhan, 1962, p.32)

McLuhan, M. (1962) The Gutenberg galaxy: the making of typographic man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press

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