Through My Eyes

 

This piece is meant to depict the more positive opportunities technology will offer us in the future as demonstrated by the story “Water,” by Ramez Naam. In this story, humans have neural implants that can run something Naam calls ‘advertech.’ Advertech functions by allowing products to create ads that draw at the senses and thoughts in order to get consumers to purchase them. This can be distracting and overwhelming, but it is in return for the ability to greatly increase humans’ mental faculties and our connections to the world around us.

This image shows how the images the neural implants create might appear inside of the heads of people who have the more advanced version of the implants. These people need not experience the ads that tug other people every which way; instead, they get added privileges and fewer drawbacks. “His pricey, top-of-the-line implants let him monitor [things] as only a few could,” is a quote from the story that demonstrates exactly this. The image I have created features a clock, a price tag on the current advertech campaign– “a running tab for the new campaign appeared in the corner of his vision” – iris identification, a personnel file, facial recognition files, as well as other assorted gadgets that I imagined being included in this technology.

This shows the positive side of this technology: some of the benefits, none of the downsides. This image is intended to depict the ‘new-and-improved’ human, with all of the cool features and gadgets we can only dream about today. These features are the ones designed only to improve society as we know it. It doesn’t portray the downsides: losing one’s individuality, civilization being overrun by AI, forfeiture of our ability to engage in deep thought.

 

Done