I got my first mobile phone when I was 16 years old, and that was back in 2002. It was a Nokia 3310 (not the one in the pic above), and I wasn’t the first owner. A French guy/gal used it before me, and I got to buy it for probably a quarter of the initial price a few years after it was launched.
I first saw that model with one of the richest dudes in town. As a matter of fact, at that time, I guess he was the richest among us here, and he was also driving a Mercedes S Klass. Man, how sleek that phone looked when he got it. When I got my hands on it, it was just a simple phone that I used for calls and text messages.
Back then, all phones were doing the same thing. The only differences between brands and models were in size and design. When I got to college, touchscreen phones started to emerge, and the present seemed to fly fast because newer models of this sort were being launched at such a rapid pace.
We were getting cameras on these models (1.3 MPX), and the whole user experience was so damn different. Nowadays, even those are highly outdated. There are certain models on the market right now that are using AI in so many ways. You can edit photos by removing subjects, and the results are so sharp that you can’t even tell the difference...
You can have a conversation with someone who doesn’t speak your language and get instant voice translation on both sides, thanks to Samsung phones. And the amount of shit one can do with just one smartphone is insane.
Technology has evolved way beyond what we do with our shiny phones. Like for example: “CEO of Pfizer promotes ingestible chip for compliance to ensure patients are taking their required meds.”
Hmmm, Pfizer... Whenever I hear that name, I think of the COVID mess—how much money this company made from selling vaccines for a virus that had a 99% survival rate, and how many individuals are suffering from taking those vaccines. Technology is such a marvelous thing—we can literally prolong our lives by years and years because of the technological power medical stuff has at hand.
Same as with anything in this world, there’s always the other side of the coin. And in the case of technology, it’s surveillance. Very few bother about such a topic, but if you check on the internet, you’ll see that our beloved smartphones—and not only them—are such great surveillance tools.
Ingestible chips were not on my menu, tbh... But the tech is here, and I have a feeling that these chips will reach blood vessels and organs not only in the bodies of those willing to go down that road but also in those who aren’t inclined toward it at all. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not against humans and tech merging.
You’ve probably heard about Neuralink, a company of Elon Musk’s that is making brain chip implants to help handicapped folks hear, or see, or whatever—but that’s a different story... My problem, and the topic of this post, is what I would call “dangerous tech.” Dangerous to our health, freedom, and free thinking...
However, I guess you can’t have true technological evolution without compromise... I just guess so...
Thanks for your attention,
Adrian
