Hyper-Awareness
How
do you experience the world? Through your senses. Your senses are your
interface, your inputs. From there your brain produces understanding
and response. But in a world that is increasingly connected,
quantitatively and qualitatively, via computer and Internet, are our
five senses enough? Our sphere of potential control has exploded. But
control requires i/o. In a world where inputs are local this is not an
issue, your senses work fine. However, when the inputs are remote what
do you do? Instant messaging is a remote sensor. It senses input
(presence) and delivers it to you over a network. Once received, your
brain then knows what to do with it and can consider an output. But
this is a rudimentary example. Think of your world, not locally, but
globally. What does it include? How much is out of your reach right
now. All of it, except what is directly around you…OR to which you
are remotely connected somehow. That is what’s new. Think about the
information that you could connect to if you could but extend your
senses. Maybe you could invent new ones to boot. Here’s an example.
You’re in a traffic jam on the highway. The other side is flying along.
You want to know if you should exit right away and try an alternate
route but not if the jam you’re in is short. But how can you tell? The
radio says nothing. You know of no online service that could tell you.
The answer is the drivers in the other lanes. They just drove past the
line of traffic you’re in and could easily tell you if it was a long
one. But how do you reach them? How do you leverage other people’s
senses?! Think of the collective power of that. Certainly work is being
done with cell phones and SMS. But it is still peer-to-peer. There are
other opportunities to leverage sensors that are not human but
"machine", placed by either you and/or others. The point is you start
to utilize and consume virtual "senses". Does that mean you can expand
YOU? If you embed these remote sensory organs into your perception,
your hyper-perception, does that create a virtual octopus out of you?
If you start to think/imagine that you can get answers to remote
sensory questions, the way you perceive, control and respond to your
world changes radically.
