what's hAPPening?

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/a-new-google-app-gives-you-local-information-before-you-ask-for-it/?ref=technology&pagewanted=print

This article details Google’s newest app, Field Trip.  The program seeks signals from cell towers to detect the location of users and then offers unprompted historical trivia about the area.  Google likens the app to “a local friend” who guides you on “your way through a city.”

 While this app does seem like a refreshing idea, awakening individuals to the lovely, rare, and titillating sights that comprise their surroundings, I am perturbed by the world this app foreshadows.  As the essay notes, “Google, along with other computers and researchers, dreams of so-called ubiquitous computing or ambient intelligence—computers woven into the texture of life as opposed to being separate machines.”  EEK.

Why do we need this?  Why must we place yet another shaving of unreality before of our eyes?  What information is so vital that it must disturb the serene flora and unfettered fauna the earth willingly and generously proffers?

Those who promote these technologies allege they will provide us with indispensable knowledge.  We will be informed, alert, and equipped for life.

I must ask…  With all of the latest apps, devices, websites, and technologies, do you notice much of a difference in us?  In our literacy?  In our concern for dying people?  In our retention of data?  In our familiarity with United States history?

Perhaps we’re more aware of things, but are we any different?  Any more knowledgeable?  I don’t think so.

Because ambient intelligence offers the same data as the aforementioned technologies, it will offer the same [lack of] benefits as those technologies.  Indeed, though its visibility tops that of the earlier devices, this is the only significant change.  Ambient intelligence will not improve us; it will merely distract, fluster, and aggravate us.

Must this be our future?  Must this app dictate the route of pending technologies?  Let me ask once more..what’s hAPPening to us?