Do you have FOMO? At some point in our lives, I believe all of us have the fear that if we don’t stay updated, we will be left behind. And I believe FOMO is the perfect excuse for the Internet, computers and mobile phones to sneak into our lives. Thanks to them, I won’t miss any news about the vaccination process in the world, the royal funeral in the UK or the shooting in Paris. Technology is artificial (they even have artificial intelligence) — in a good way. Our phones, computers, bikes, cars are our artificial ears, brain, legs and speed. Five years ago, Elon Musk said that we were cyborgs because we all have our digital versions of ourselves, and we are having a symbiosis with machines. I’m not a fan of the guy’s personality but I can’t lie that I agree with him. Furthermore, the idea of being cyborgs is a little scary but so much exciting. Have you seen what Cyborg can do as a member of the Justice League (please make sure that you see the director cut version)? I won’t say it’s totally imagination. Swedes have implanted microchips under their skin for years — that’s no imagination at all.
However, there are always two sides of the same coin. The addition of technology — or the intelligence of technology — sometimes reflects how we don’t feel enough being normal people. PredPol (predictive policing) is the software programme that helps the police predict “where and when a crime occurs based on data sets of past crimes.” As what the software does is predicting, the result of its prediction would be unpredictable, and there is the possibility that its prediction can be inaccurate. Since I have heard about this technology, I have questioned why real humans need this kind of assistance.
The first book about big data that I have read is Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. The book presents the idea that nowadays, we tend to make decisions based on data. The difference between this new decision-making process and the traditional one is that the correlation between data and the decisions is not the cause-effect relation. It means that although living in an area with a high crime rate does not ensure that you will commit a crime in the future, PredPol may still put you on the list of potential crime. In that case, who can we blame — the software programme or the policeman who uses it?
“Smart” has been a buzz word — smartphone, smart refrigerator, smart city. All of the smart devices undertake many tasks — filtering spam emails, tracking groceries or, uhm…, what does a smart city really do? Anyways, looking back to the past, fire was one of the smartest finding of humans that keeps us warm, safe and full. Along the time, we fully understand how fire works. However, not many of us understand how our smartphones, smart refrigerators and smart cities are constructed. Today smart inventions stay mysterious to most of the people who are using them. Furthermore, technology does not always play the role of assistants. If you don’t live in Italy, you probably have many chances to use the service of Uber — the largest taxi firm in the world that owns no cars. In Vietnamese, we call the people who drive that kind of taxis “technology drivers.” They have to use their cars, they receive low income, and the company doesn’t want to guarantee them any promotion.
Technology or no technology — it’s not the question if we should keep using our smartphones and computers. It is, actually, a question that reminds us to keep the balance between being smart as normal people and asking technology for help with decision-making. And in case a wrong decision is made, it is us to take the responsibility, not the machines that we create.
