To just imagine getting through an average day without it would send shivers up most of our spines!

So where is it going to take us next?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Martin Cooper highlights the future capabilities of the machine suggesting  that in time phones will be used to flag and monitor medical conditions held within the body of the holder. Cooper believes that the minimalist look is set to continue suggesting in a 2010 interview with the BBC that:

“[T]he cellphone in the long range is going to be embedded under your skin behind your ear along with a very powerful computer who is in effect your slave”  promoting what Haraway (2000) refers to as the ambiguity created by machines “in the difference between natural and artifical, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.” (Haraway, 2000, p.36]

Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge.

I had never used Glogster before. In fact, the first time that I had even seen the word in print was when I saw it on the list of ‘possibles’ provided to us for our artifact presentation options.

 As a presentation platform Glogster ticks several boxes. It supports audio, text and image. At the outset of this project I had was very conscious of my inexperience when it came to audio / sound so I decided that it would HAVE to be a majority stakeholder in my presentation. Screeching violins, unnerving whispers and the most dystopian-esque music I could find online! 

Having the option to ‘create’ [ term loosely applied!] a visual background and build upon it allowed me to think in terms of layers. By layering the topic it became easier to break down the interactions / discussions of dystopia from the MOOC  and see how various components could/n’t knit together. This digital artifact project was a series of firsts for me….introduction to Soundcloud,  experimentation in charcoal and  of course the use of the presentation form Glogster itself. It is a nifty presentation platform, one that I would both use again and recommend.

Minority Report (2002)

With each generational wave, our level of expectation from technology and the digital realm continues to rise.  Digital has become commonplace, standard, that which is required as a starting point. Today’s digital native uses a very different digital base line to measure life against compared to the digital immigrant.

Has our constant absorption of the digital helped to create an insatiable need to remould ourselves in order to become better at  participation in the digital realm itself? The infiltration of mass media into our existing has made us dependent on it questioning how or why we should ever function without.

Consumerism feeds our need to have that sought after device, that accessory that is ‘so now’. Ownership and access to the digital creates exclusivity and a sense of  belonging, creating communities and groups . The Future of Communication video outlines one possible route that the digital world could pursue and how that route would impact upon our being.

Digital culture has become part of our being  / Our being has become an inseparable part of  digital culture.