Research 4/Blog on Kurzweil and New Media

The New Media Senior Seminar has helped me to realize how significant and amazing new media really is. It consumes my life so much, that I take it for granted. In fact, it is my life.

I wake up in the morning with the sound of a song of my choice. It is an alarm that makes sure that I am up, while frustrating me to the point that I absolutely hate the song that I chose the night before. This very alarm comes from my cell phone. Wow! Not only, can I talk on my Motorola Krazer, but I can use it as an alarm clock that uses the sounds of my choice.

And, if that is not good enough, I can use my phone as a digital photo album. It actually has a camera built in it. I can take and view pictures any time I want to. Not only that, but I can send the pictures that I take to whomever I please via text messaging. Being digital and all, the photographs in the phone also have the capability to be sent to my computer. From my computer, I can view the pictures however I want to, e-mail them to whomever I want to, and even edit them the way I want to.

And yet, there is more. On my phone, I have a calendar, an organizer, a calculator, voice commands, and even a world clock. My phone has e-mail and voice mail. It has various wallpapers and screensavers. The video camera it has isn’t too bad either and the MP3 player is definitely a plus. By the way, the MP3 player has touch-sensitive buttons. Speaking of touch-sensitive buttons, I find it interesting how Nicholas Negroponte says that, “Personal computers almost never have your finger meet the display, which is quite startling when you consider that the human finger is a pointing device you don’t have to pick up, and we have ten of them” (Negroponte 131-132). He also says, “yet it hasn’t caught on” (Negroponte 132). Later on the same page he says that, “The real reason for not using fingers is that we haven’t yet found a good technology for sensing the near field of a finger when your finger is close to but not touching the display” (Negroponte 132). I personally feel that while that might be a more advanced way of computing, it just might not be that appealing to the user. Technology is rapidly growing but the last thing we should worry about is whether or not our personal computers have touch-sensitive screens, even though it may be useful for a source such as a cell phone.

With the exception of watching full-length television shows or movies, my digital source of communication known as the cell phone, is capable of many digital things to do or see. By the way, it will not be long before we can start watching full-length television shows or even movies on our cell phones.

It amazes me how far we as a society have come, when all of these capabilities can be emerged in a device that is no bigger than our hands, an extension of ourselves. With all this being said, is there a cost or negative consequence to the continuing advancements of our new media?

With all that amazes me about our new advancements of technology and media, I can not help but be slightly skeptical or even frightened of the possibilities and consequences thy may hold. Can these continuing advancements actually do more harm to us than good?

Ray Kurzweil’s, The Age of Spiritual Machines, explores the ongoing possibilities of new technology that will eventually change the way we live by drastic measures. Kurzweil evidentially feels strongly about the way our technology is heading. He begins with prophecies of different decades ranging from 2009 to 2099. Kurzweil even says that in 2029, “A $1,000 unit of computation has the computing capacity of approximately 1,000 human brains” (Kurzweil 220). What a scary thought that is. As if the world was not intimidating enough, I have to worry about a computer’s processing speed being 1,000 times faster than my own brain. Don’t get me wrong, the thought of a computer that fast is cool but with the capabilities of doing well with the technology, there are ways of doing bad. Who is to say that humans will even be able to tell the difference between a computer and another human? About 2029, Kurzweil says that, “Machines claim to be conscious and to have as wide an array of emotional and spiritual experiences as their human progenitors, and these claims are largely accepted” (Kurzweil 224). Now, I don’t know about anybody else, but I do not necessarily like the thought of an international enemy having access to this sort of fast computation, let alone an enemy within my own country. Just the thought of foreign enemies using this new media to their advantage freaks me out. Yes, technology has already spread and there are foreign enemies that share some of the same technological knowledge that we have, but imagine our enemies with computation up to the speed of 1,000 human brains. What will we do then? And if that is the case, how will one president be able to fix everything like everybody wants him or her to do? He or she just has one brain. Will we even need a president? If so, will our president have implants in his brain to make him smarter? Other countries would then catch up to the new advancements and what would we do then? And that is just 22 years away. That is still in my lifetime.

I know I am riding the fence on these questions but I cannot tell the future, nor do I want to. My point is that with everything good, there can be bad, and we as a society may be smarter than for our own good.



Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines. New York: Penguin, 1999.