I stumbled across a Discovery Channel series on Youtube over the weekend that I want to share.
The 2057 is a presentation of a 50 year extrapolation of our developed society, based on current research and social memes. The video linked here is a look at the individual human body in 2057, in terms of medicine, clothing, shelter and a taste of social development. Not to foreshadow too much, but it is the social development suggestions which I found troubling.
Beyond that, I am not going to comment in the blog itself but instead I will put my initial thoughts in the comment section. I am hoping that people will view the 40-some minute production and leave their thoughts in the comments section as well.
3 years ago
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3 comments:
Personally, I think there is some great technology potential presented here. The ability to save lives and increase quality of life LOOKS to be far greater than is even the case now.
The trouble is, Discovery seems quite happy to suggest that it will be fine to allow private industry access to every aspect of our lives. Not only that, the presenters seem to be fine with an obviously highly marginalized lower class which is deemed not productive enough to have access to these higher technologies. Even the benevolent and tricky chief surgeon only put her neck out for the higher class patient.
I suppose we might avoid this sort of future if we run out of resources prior to achieving it, as seems fairly likely. I cannot say we`d really be in a much better situation if that indeed comes to pass.
I think this video embodies so much of what I am trying to warn people about with this blog. I have not yet watched 2057 The World, so I am wondering if there is any mention of climate change issues in that presentation. I`m sure I will be back with another post after watching that one.
I am looking forward to discussion.
I finally made some time to watch this but my browser will not let me see anything except the first one. However, I did get the gist and will keep an eye out for the rest. Fascinating on the one hand and frightening too.
My first thought was the cost of the clothing. I can imagine that one shirt would be well out of the reach of most. I see from your comment that you took issue with that as well regarding a later video.
From a technological point of view, it seems actually simple enough (the cloth part) although still amazing.
However, the reality is, it isn't smart clothing, just clothing that collects and transmits data. If a shirt simulated the Heimlich maneuver, I would be extremely impressed, if it helped heavily bleeding wounds coagulate quickly then it would be beyond fantastic.Even just insulating the body in the event of shock would be an improvement over simple data collection.
I feel just from those 8 or so minutes, the enthusiasm portrayed was a very hard sell. It seemed that it was made to distract from the scary part, data collection. A wolf in sheep's clothing so to speak.
hehe, good point. A Heimlich shirt would be amazing indeed.
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