‘Google Glass’ and the Boundaries of ‘Acceptable’ Technology

Grant J. Kidney— ‘Google Glass’ is an extraordinary project which gives rise to a whole new market of ‘Internet glasses’. Simply by dawning special eye-ware, Google Glass users can browse the web, access email, and video chat with friends.

Several privacy concerns have been addressed over the issue of Internet glasses however. Suppose for instance that the glasses are equipped with facial recognition technology that would allow users to scan one’s face against the social networks, hence making identification of a specific person a walk in the park. Of course one could simply opt out of social networking entirely so as to avoid such identification.

Privacy concerns aside, this is an author who has no issue with the advent of wicked cool technology- and Google Glass is just that, wicked cool. I do have to draw the line however when it comes to putting technology inside of our bodies- and Internet glasses are just one step closer to that ever so fateful moment in history when we ultimately decide to strip away our humanity by implanting ourselves with microchips.

It has long since been the goal of the transhumanist crowd to merge mankind with machines. Ashamed of who and what we are, some folks actually seek to download their brains in to robot duplicates of themselves so as to live forever in artifice.

There were at least one or two moments in my geeky past where I actually advocated the transhumanist agenda. After a deep philosophical transformation however, I’ve since come to the conclusion that by infusing with technology, human beings would inadvertently lose the magic that is otherwise labeled the ‘soul’.

The establishment is already pushing the idea of microchipping the human population. If successful, the plan to mechanize the human species would allow for the elite to manipulate the population by remote control. Imagine being fed advertisements and government issued mandates right in to your brain.

I personally have no issue with ‘exoskeletal’, mechanical updates to our ordinary human selves. For instance, it would be rather cool to have a mechanical, outer-shell for my arms that would allow me to lift up vehicles or to punch people through the wall. But pin me down to a table and force me to be implanted with a microchip and one better believe that there’s going to be some resistance.

We must ask ourselves, how far will technology be allowed to grow before it obliterates us? Yes we must push for the stars and explore new worlds- but we don’t have to make this extraordinary journey as some new robospecies.

Internet glasses are not evil in and of themselves. If we continue to push such technology on the exoskeletal level, this is fine. But it’ll take a hell of a lot of propaganda to convince me and many others that the wave of the future is by sticking circuit boards in to our assholes.

‘Intel inside’. May God help us all.

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