The new normal

 There was this wonderful article about the future of the internet that I read recently. It proves how brilliant technology is getting literally by the second.

Very soon the internet would totally depend on voice recognition systems. Thus, it seems, the keyboard and the mouse both would be obsolete, irrelevant sooner and, eh, faster. It appears, moreover, that the internet would more and more directly relate to our senses. The next stage hence most obviously would be that there could be chips in our bodies for better connectivity. Science fiction as reality!

Highly exciting indeed! In my opinion, however, there are the unmistakable seeds of dystopia in this new normal. Let me present a few points to explain why I think so. First and foremost, imagine the sound pollution once this new technology is introduced. Private spaces or the public sphere would literally be towers of Babel, what with everyone internet-(r)ing orally. 

Given the primacy thus of our oral, aural, and to some extent, tactile sensory processing, what would happen to our other senses? Would the visual disappear totally? How would we read, if at all? As it is, the kindle books are already getting obsolete, what with flipbooks, and what have you. Verbal  language, too, is already getting displaced with emojis, for instance! Incidentally, how would emojis be said? Or would language get more spoken than written/read, which is the Normal process of learning the first language anyways!

A much graver issue would be how would we mean, if perception would dominate? Would that imply that cognition, the current bedrock of our thoughts, ideas, concepts would disappear or would assume totally different shapes?

The real grave danger would be that if our hearts would thus literally on our tongues, how are we to control our privacy? Forget gossiping flourishing,much worse, would not we be, moreover, opener to thought control? Unlike "Inception", the Big Brother would not even need to control our dreams, if we (how) can dream at all? 

Welcome to the (b)rave (and rant, literally) world! Even if the first ideation of this new virtuality appears frightening, well, I believe strongly that there is something within the human(e) that defeats anything that is totally negative! For the time being, fingers crossed that very soon finger on the lips would not be our individual and/or social plight! 

Pratima@let the new normal not be normative!