Gesture Based Technology

       A world without remotes? That would be nice; no more searching between couch cushions and turning on the lights to change the channel. Being able to control technology with voice command and simple hand gestures sounds great, yet something about it puts up a red light. How lazy will our world become in the future? A future where one can sit on the couch for hours and access all of their entertainment and work needs without getting up? Our advances in technology are bringing us to live in an age where our idea of what the future will be like is turning into an instant reality. The future is now, apparently.

      
       The Xbox Kinect is one of the more advanced products in the field of gesture based computing. It could lead us to the aforementioned remote-free future. I do not necessarily believe that this is a bad advancement, or that other products expanding in this field are negative for our society. There are many great accomplishments that could be made through the use of products such as the Xbox Kinect or the Sixth Sense, but we must keep in mind the possible negative effects. Expansions in gesture based computing could bring our world to be a better place, and hopefully will, as long as we do not allow it to negatively affect us. Forgetting what unhealthy effects advancements in technology could have on Earth would be suicidal to our society, yet it is ignorant to be against all technology in general.

      

       If we are able to manipulate a computer program with a simple twist of a gloved hand, as with the Tamper, imagine what we could accomplish in other fields of technology. The search for the cure to different cancers could become known, for if we can have such unbelievable advances in the field of gesture based computing, a field that did not even exist outside of futuristic stories (aside from its extremely basic form) until recent years, just imagine what advances we could have in the field of medicine. Gesture based technology could have a great influence on our lives, so long as we do not forget about the very realistic and possible negative effects.

Are We Becoming Computers?

       We are advancing in technology every single day; we are becoming dependent upon man-made intelligences. Craving to have these resources accessible to us at all times, we are virtually trying to make the intelligence of computers and other advanced technology our own. Our human race has always considered ourselves above other species, yet our own ways have us feeling inferior to advanced technology. This may appear ridiculous, seeing as how we create the technology ourselves, yet we have an unsettling need to acquire the skills and knowledge that computers have.

       The Sixth Sense is evidence of this seeing as how people have the desire, the need, to carry technology with them. They actually have it attached to them so it is accessible at all times – as if it is part of their own being, a part of them, which they control. The human race has the desire to adopt the advanced technology that they have created as their own intelligences. At the end of the video, there are even claims that in the future the devices used for the Sixth Sense could be surgically installed and hardwired into our bodies - we would literally be turning ourselves into computers. Is this too much of an exaggeration? Jumping to conclusions? I don't think so. I find it unnatural to improve our natural-born intelligence to such extremes.