Removing the missing link

I love my i-pod, I love my laptop and if someone would just get me one, I’m sure I’d love my i-phone. Those deep feelings aside, the last thing I really want is an intimate relationship with my computer.

As technological advances rapidly develop and become more and more self-sustainable, it seems inevitable that humans will gradually be phased out of many of their current fields of operation. And, depending on how pessimistically one views the world, it seems computers are quickly becoming smarter than their operators…

While computers may be capable of managing other computers, there is still a large-scale human element which involves the programming and processing of these systems. With the drastic increase in the use of sensors in technology, soon computers will be managing sensors which will subsequently be in command of a whole fleet of computer systems. One such sensor is that used in many of the shopping centres in the USA, attached to the products and correlating to their barcodes. The trolley full of goods can merely be passed through a detector which communicates with the various product sensors, coming to a total amount. This can then be deducted off the shopper’s smart card, also by means of a sensor, eliminating the need for check-out attendants. Phase one complete…

Furthermore, once the barcode has been registered and paid for on the consumer’s smartcard, a message is sent back to the stock computer to register that stock has been removed from the shelves. Arduous hours of manual stock count will quickly become a thing of the past. As just one of the simpler benefits of sensors, the idea can be stretched far further. Sensors can be used to monitor employee timecards, collate criminal data and even monitor employee stress levels in the workplace (as can be seen from Microsoft’s new patent which monitors breathing, heart rate and brain signals).

While this may sound scary and conjure up images of creepy Asimov-esque chronicles or Matrix scenes foretelling human destruction at the hands of machines, in reality this is a huge step in the universal “making-our-lives-easier” project. Most humans generally just look at a system and, provided it works well enough, are content not to know the inner workings or the individual components that go bleep bleep bleep. With sensors to take care of those mundane monitorings, it means more time can be invested by the ordinary person in other projects.

While it sounds like the machines are taking over, it merely means that computers are doing their optimum job by hiding the intricate calculations and details and providing us with only what we need to know.