Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Amber case on the Role of Technology - Robots are our friends

Amber Case raising an interesting thesis -- technology like social media serves to relieve the isolationism enhanced by the industrial revolution.

"Good technology should make you superhuman," claims Amber Case, a cyborg anthropologist. Cyborg anthropology is a way of understanding how we live as technosocially connected citizens in the modern era. Case explores questions like: How is human experience evolving with technology? What are the implications to privacy in the digital realm? and How does technology affects our humanity? (more here)

The rise of the machines may come about due to our inherent hubris, but Case suggests the positive aspects of the tools we've built, and she actively investigates the nature of our relationship with those tools. Case believes we all live in the future. "We're able to touch a button and hear something on the other side of the world. We're able to carry a community in our pockets as we walk down the street," she says. By using anthropological methods to study human behavior and discover how people work, play, share and communicate she's able to make better solutions for users for some of the largest companies.

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