Technological Baggage

Ah, yes, technology. I love it! Really, I do. It does so many great things for us. It cooks our food, waters our plants, destroys our enemies, runs our favorite MMORPGs, and so much more. Well, for this article, I want to focus on a specific kind of technology. The technology most people think about when they hear the word “technology”: our phones and computers, gadgets and gizmos, electronic chips and brain implants. Undoubtedly, all of our fancy, electricity-using, technology confers upon us many, many benefits. It can even be said that we’ve become dependent on our technological gizmos or, rather, dependent on the benefits that we receive from our gizmos. Just as a teenage girl loves her smartphone, we love our technology. But enough about the benefits of technology, what about the unwanted and unintended consequences that come with our technology? What about the baggage?

In a previous article, we talked about PayPal’s interest in embeddable, injectable, and ingestible devices that serve to authenticate the user. These devices would provide a more secure user experience as it reduces the chance that an attacker will be able to access a user’s device, online account, etc. But the public’s reaction (see the comments) to these devices wasn’t overwhelming favorable. If I had to take a guess, I’d say that most people would be adverse to having a chip installed inside their body, for at least a few reasons. One of these reasons relates to the possible baggage that this device carries. Just what kind of baggage, or unintended consequences, would PayPal’s authentication devices carry?

In all honesty, it’s difficult to tell what kind of consequences PayPal’s devices would have. Most of these consequences would only come to light after people began using the devices. And then it would probably be too late to completely manage those consequences. The best PayPal could do would be to try to mitigate them. However severe the consequences of PayPal’s authentication devices would be, I think they would pale in comparison to the consequences of another technology we recently talked about.

Remember that brain implant Intel is developing? It’s time for me to talk about those repercussions I only briefly hinted at in my article on the subject. Intel’s brain implant will be able to sense a person’s brain waves, interpret those brain waves into commands, and, then, send those commands to a remote computer in order to be executed. Again, it is difficult to determine just what kind of baggage this technology brings with it, but I think some baggage may be guessed. Can you imagine someone with this brain implant walking into a room and discreetly manipulating the files on a computer? I can. Of course, this will depend on how a computer actually receives the sent commands. But, for the moment, let’s just reflect on the idea of discreetly controlling a computer with only our thoughts…It is a nice thought, isn’t it?

Would people with these brain implants be allowed into office buildings, political buildings, or any building where a computer is present? If they were allowed inside, would they be required to wear tin foil hats? Can you imagine the security guard explaining the security procedure to a group of people. Picture a security guard addressing a group of people, “Okay everyone, I’m going to have to ask you to take out your brains and put them in this basket before entering the room.” What about politicians visiting the White House? “Okay everyone, I’ll have to ask you to take out your bra-“ Ah, screw it, the joke makes itself.

Additionally, what about the possibility that someone could hack into this brain implant? If a brain implant can send signals, how long before it possesses the capacity to receive signals? Now that’s some serious technological baggage.

But, you may say, does any of this really concern us? After all, what’s the likelihood of people actually getting authentication devices embedded into their bodies or people getting brain implants that allow them to remotely access and control computers? Andrew Chien, vice president of research and director of future research technologies at Intel Labs, had something to say about this.

"I think human beings are remarkable[sic] adaptive" … "If you told people 20 years ago that they would be carrying computers all the time, they would have said, 'I don't want that. I don't need that.' Now you can't get them to stop. There are a lot of things that have to be done first but I think [implanting chips into human brains] is well within the scope of possibility."

And just as all those computers people carry on them carry technological baggage, so will other future technologies, brain implants included.

So, before you buy that new smartphone, new computer, or brain implant, be aware of the technological baggage that comes with the purchase.