So some readers tried to call me out over last week's post, Reason #30 to Live Nebulously, questioning whether the product that I provided a link to deserved such a negative distinction. A few felt the need to defend Lifelogger, one of them in a point-by-point evaluation, as though I were writing (or he was) for Consumer Reports.
Frankly, I don't give a shit about the product one way or another. It might be the niftiest thing since sliced bread, might blow all similar products on the market out of the water. My point was not to single out Lifelogger, as such, but rather to assert that the 'wearable technology' phenomenon, set to ramp up this year, is also set to become much more than a string of latest gadget fads. We are no longer talking about useless items we pick out of the Sharper Image catalog so we can one-up friends and family, be ahead of the curve in our never-ending quest to add to our collections of shit we can't take with us. No sir, this is something else; this is nothing less than an evolutionary step for our species, one that is not going to lead anywhere good.
My complaint comes in two parts:
1) Wearable technology can and will be used to invade people's privacy, there's no way around it. Yes, laws are being enacted in certain areas, intended to guard against sketchy behavior, to prevent creepers from peering through windows or up skirts. But ordinary people - the victims - really have no way of telling when and where something like that is happening, so these 'laws' are essentially ineffective. Having them in place might fast-track a legal response, but they take no preventative measure, or even posture, whatsoever.
Privacy, in this society, has been taking a beating for quite a while, and it doesn't have to be something skeevy going on to be wrong, or at least very annoying. Even I'm guilty of this. When I was fifteen, I was annoying as all hell, visiting my older brother in New York City for the first time, innocently going around snapping pictures of people with my disc camera. I fancied myself a photographer-at-large...er, something like that...was not content with just landmarks and skylines in my photos; I wanted people, 'New Yorkers', and went out of my way to get the shot.
More than a few people did not take kindly to this, including a cabbie who actually climbed out of his ride to confront me. At the time, I had the temerity to be indignant, even (ignorantly) invoked my 'rights'...but I get it now. Those people didn't want their pictures taken, nor should they have had to endure it. I didn't have the right to do what I was doing.
I'd be the same way now, were I aware of it going on. You'd be pretty damn pathetic, traveling to my town and considering me worth taking a picture of, but in theory, I'd protest strenuously if you did. And furthermore, I don't want to be an 'extra' in someone's lame movie, don't want to be captured strolling unawares through the periphery of their GoPro moment. Chances are, I already have. Chances are, most of us have.
I shudder to think of a world, already becoming reality, where everyone is a paparazzo. If I were a celebrity, or an attractive woman going about her day, minding her business, I would be concerned; I would be watchful, especially as these wearable devices become harder to spot. When Google Glass (Reason #1 to Live Nebulously, actually...) was introduced a couple years back, it was big, clunky and ugly, hanging off the user's face like a tumor. Now, as I predicted, its successors are sleeker and less conspicuous. You might not even notice that the individual across from you in a restaurant has pushed record, and is now sitting stock still, filming you as you eat, and as he eats. :-/
2) Just my opinion, I know, but there simply is no reason whatsoever to video/photo document every living, breathing moment of our waking hours. Yes, if you're doing something magnificent - if you're base jumping in a wingsuit off a high rise in Sao Paulo, or crossing the equator on your way to the Marquesas, or even if you drove all the way to the Grand Canyon and want to try to quantify the depth of its beauty with imagery (though everyone pretty much knows that never seems to work out so well...), then by all means, Go Pro it up, dude (or dudette).
But as it's said that the modern Valentine's Day is really a fake holiday concocted (or perpetuated) by greeting card companies, it might be said with equal confidence that the desire to document our lives, or notion that we should, or must, has been manufactured (and perpetuated) by companies who make products like Lifelogger, and GoPro, and Google Glass. These companies are preying on, rather than servicing, that potent desire - gripping each and every once of us - to feel as though our lives matter, that they will be remembered, and cherished, first by ourselves and then others after we're gone. In the Lifelogger 'corporate video' I provided a link to, we are led, with schmaltzy dialogue and sickly sentimental nursery rhyme music, to picture ourselves in some static tableau of the future, an elderly individual sitting in a comfy chair in a comfy living room, reflecting on a life well-lived with an approving smile and misty eyes.
"Imagine recording eight hours of footage without holding up a camera..." the narrator intones.
Why would anybody do that?
"...live streaming your memories with friends and family, or capturing all the simple ones you might forget."
What's wrong with forgetting? Having everything - everything - in a virtual continuum of photos and videos to look back on when you're 80...concocting your own Truman Show...I don't know, it gives me the creeps. Yes, there are certain things, truly special moments, signposts on the road of life, that deserve to be captured in picture or video; but most things don't really need more than a totemic symbol (the classic 'leaf pressed in a book', if you will), they actually keep better stored solely in the mind; and some things, a lot of things I hate to say, just don't deserve to be remembered, or immortalized, at all.
If we 'capture' and remember everything, that is, if we engage the largely clinical practice of 'logging' our life as though it's the reality TV show we feel it's worthy of being, nothing stands out. Life becomes just a sick obsession with the past, an opiate addiction for days gone by, which is not healthy.
According to Dictionary.com, 'cyborg' is defined as: "person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device."
We are witnessing the beginning of this. It's still in its infancy stage, but a couple of our key senses - sight and sound - are already being 'aided' by technology that we can now wear, place as part of our person, and I truly believe the ramifications of doing so have yet to be revealed, or even imagined.
Ahhh...makes me really long for the highway, the open road, out beyond the reach of cameras...
Oh wait, the sad truth is 'the highway' is no longer beyond the reach of cameras either.
