Hologram

This kind of technology is amazing. Absolutely amazing. And undoubtedly a part of our near futures. It’s worth watching if you’ve got the time.

Trouble is, Mark Zuckerberg, who’s Hologram comes over as a cool sounding, quite broad minded, wise techno guy, is also the man behind a social media experience that controls, with it’s self serving algorithms, whom we can speak to and who can speak to us, whilst at the same time constantly pushing all the stuff we should be buying or looking at.

He’s turned a format, that was initially brilliant for connecting with people, into a minefield that quite simply mines our data to earn money for the shareholders, with no concern for the quality of our experience while it does so. It’s the massive downside of the advertising model that governs so much of our online experience.

We still haven’t learned to use the technology we already have in an ethical way which really benefits us. At the moment it simply dominates our daily lives, for better or worse, and anything new and shiny looking is turned into a money spinner for big corporations, whose aim is usually to dominate us even more.

So forgive me if I’m a little slow to jump (or allow myself to be pushed) into the brave new world on offer, with a big smile, and a heart full of optimism.

We can’t completely avoid the path we’re heading down as a society, and it would daft to try. But we should fight, as much as we are able, to maintain our choice as individuals and to sometimes stand stubbornly outside the every increasing pursuit towards a technological progress that we have no control over.

The healthy synchronism of our digital and physical lives, spoken enthusiastically about in the video link above, should rightly be treated with a great deal of healthy cynicism.