Goodbye Humans, Hello Technology?
- Tristan Farrows
- Apr 22, 2020
- 4 min read
There is a lot of uncertainty swirling around the world today with the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic. We do not know when we will be able to leave our houses and resume our “normal” lives. What will be our new normal after the pandemic? Technology is playing a huge role in how we currently live our lives. Will we continue to order our groceries online? Will non-essential businesses physically open stores back up or switch to online only?
Our reliance on technology to survive is very obvious in these times. In the future, good design will replace human activities with technological automation. Slowly but surely technological advances have happened that could be argued to have good or bad impacts on society. Both the change of the pandemic and the precedent of changing technologies throughout time show that human activities will be replaced with technological automation in the near future.
Over the years there has been a slow transition to the technological automation of our lives. In 1917 the Ford plant in Michigan started the world’s first car assembly line. This had a gigantic impact on our we live our lives. The assembly line made cars easily available and affordable to people far and wide. Huge highways were built and suburbs started to pop up. We now rely on cars to get us to and from almost everywhere we go. These are things that are very normal and expected today, but a major result of technological automation. Designer Maker User (2016)
Next, the clean “machine aesthetic” was craved by the world. The look of slick machine produced objects were more sought after than quality handmade artifacts. The Bauhaus started to make their designs look like they were produced by a machine even though they were hand made. Designers create objects or buildings that can easily be mass-produced and recreated. Disavowing Craft at the Bauhaus: Hiding the Hand to Suggest Machine Manufacture (2008)
More recently, factories have evolved even from an assembly line of men to an assembly line of machines. In a warehouse close to Berlin there is a robot that has been programmed to learn how to pick up different types of objects out of crates. This robot is said to “do what others can’t: work 24 hours a day, picking items without fuss”. The robot uses multiple suction cups to pick be able to pick up a variety of objects. The big shock is that this robot is able to learn how to pick things up just by looking at it. It is designed to learn on its own. The designers and engineers who are working on this project are designing a robot that can think critically like a human. I think that this is the first glimpse of the robots of our future. With much more innovation to come and new tasks that they will be able to complete. https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/29/21083313/robot-picking-warehouses-logistics-a I-covariant-stealth
Also, the “cloud” has taken over how companies use computer software, store data and maintain their software. There are tons of new companies that use the cloud to remotely perform technical services without even being physically there. This is seen in companies like salesforce who sell or rent software online. This takes away any physical interaction between humans. Normally a company would have to physically buy all of this software and have huge systems installed to house it. Not any more. They can do all of this through the cloud. If this software needs to be maintained, you guessed it, there’s a way to automatically have that done over the cloud too. NoOps is a company that has an automated way of servicing software over the cloud. They also take away human jobs like monitoring spending on tech. I do not know too much about programming or cloud software, but I can see that these are replacing the jobs that used to take hundreds of humans to do. From the installation of large computer software to tracking company spending, there’s an app for that. https://www.forbes.com/sites/googlecloud/2020/02/19/how-to-spot-thebiggest-tech-developments/#5e0dec22614f
One way to look at our reliance on technology can be that it is harming the human race. Jean Baudrillard states that if we care so much about machines “that are endowed with genius, it is because [we] despair [our] own uniqueness”. Are we losing our creativity and uniqueness because of the restraints that technology puts on us? Technology also lacks artifice. It can not truly take over every human activity, because technology can never feel emotions like passion or seduction. Time has proven that some of our activities have been taken over by technological automation and it looks like more and more parts of our lives will, but technology will not be able to take away who we are as people. Xerox and Infinity (1990)
The evolution of technology may sound like we are entering a world close to that of Blade Runner or Terminator, but lots of technological advancements have greatly benefited us as a species. We have looked at the evolution of the car and how that has changed our lives in many ways. But it is our new normal. Change is necessary and good for society. Technological change also refers to new techniques for doing things. Technological advances save us time and money. Take for example the Bessemer furnace. This was a new technology that changed the way that steel was made, which in turn changed how buildings were made. Any of these small technological advances can have a huge impact on our society as a whole. The advances in technology are a must for us to grow as a society. Future shock (1970)
The patterns of the past and the massive changes occurring as we speak in our society clearly show that most human activities will be replaced by technological automation. From physical machines doing manual labour to the cloud automatically updating software and storing data. The design community will be focused on how to create technology that makes human lives easier. Change in technology and our lives is upon us. It is up to us as humans to choose how we react to this change. Will we let it take away our creativity and will we become brain dead? Or will we embrace this change and use it to our advantage?
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