8. Our Interaction with the World



When you are living your life, it's easy to let the sheer magnitude of change pass us by unnoticed. But take a second to think about how we interact and communicate with the world today compared to what we used to do even just a couple of decades ago, and it's mind boggling how far we've come. The internet and smart phones have made us more accessible as people, and given us a gateway to a whole wealth of information that we once had to go to serious effort to find.
New concepts are building on these innovations too. Google Glass already allows a user to take a picture of a place or building and receive instant information about it to their phone. And this is just laying the foundations for what's to come. As soon as the technology exists and people are comfortable with the idea, we can expect brain chips to hit the market and revolutionize our interactions completely. These will allow 'pop ups' to appear in our field of view, giving us all sorts of information about the world around us. According to Google technology chief Raymond Kurzweil, we can expect these pop ups to form part of our daily life by 2020. Before the chips come along, we will just have to be happy with devices that do the same job:

Google Glass How-To: Getting Started  (Video)

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/4EvNxWhskf8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/4EvNxWhskf8</a>

What do you think? Are these advances for better or for worse? Are they exciting or scary? Will you be happy about the idea of having a chip fitted in your brain? Let us know if the comments section!