I don't usually start a topic for fun, but for a change I will.
At present with the ipad, Nook, Kindle, and various apps seemingly poised to replace print media, do you ever wonder what's next after that?
It seems to me, with IMAX theatres and the like, that the new media is not only moving away from analog to digital, and not only from hardcopy (physical) to virtual, and not only from the large and clunky to the small and portable...but also away from the mechanical altogether (on the surface). In other words, instead of staring into a device, you become the device.
Sci-fi films like "Star Wars: a New Hope" with the holographic image of Princess Leia's plea for Obi Wan Kenobi's help or the first "Iron Man" film with Tony Stark (actor Robert Downey Jr.) moving holographic computer images with his own body only confirm this desire in some quarters.
If our bodies become the viewing screen/listening monitors, it would certainly make the movie-going (or online) experience have that much more impact on individuals. While many would be thrilled to have the movie play in one's head, or to be in a room where characters in an action film would rush about in a panorama where you are in the midst (let alone seeming to talk face-to-face with a friend who is actually across the world in the ultimate holographic video phonecall), others would rightly be concerned about the effect of subliminal messages, product placement (in one's mind), or viruses downloaded into one's body/thoughts. Sound far-fetched? We're almost there.
We know that in the Great Tribulation that the Antichrist will cause all to receive a mark on their right hand or forehead in order to buy or sell. The same mark will very likely be a tracking device, ID/credit card, and perhaps even the device that causes the image of the Beast to "come to life." I'm not against technological advances at all, but we do know that one day soon those advances will be monopolized by that counterfeit messiah. Thoughts?
Replies
Hi Tony,
Yes, the tailoring of browser ads is one of the things that led to the idea of them following you into whatever screen you're looking at.
Lee
Tony Snipes said:
Lee-
I currently work with Yahoo "Behavioral Targetting" ads where the web display ads are delivered only to people based on the articles they've read, ads they've clicked and key words they've searched over periods of time. It's like Tom Cruise in "Minority Report"!
Tony-
Lee Weeks said:
Buzz wrote: "...a guy puts an orgasm on a tape loop & ends up hospitalized b/c of it..."
Sadly, I can see the porn industry running away with this technology as the barriers between real life and virtual reality become further blurred.
On a less salacious note, didn't some of the audience for the silent film "The Great Train Robbery" run out of the theatre, thinking that they were about to be run down by the locomotive as it sped towards the camera (though silently and in black-and-white)? Now, about a century later, such imagery wouldn't be in-your-face, but rather in-your-head. Now that's scary.
I saw an interview with Ebert going back more than a decade where he speculated about the real possibility of not needing a cell phone -- where we would be the phonethrough a chip implant. Apparently, the tech is almost there.
Talk about "hands-free!"
Also, something I have imagined based on the specialized spam we receive that's not too dissimilar to Buzz's goggles idea: we've all seen digital billboards-- what if they displayed something different for each person, depending upon a communication betwix the billboard and a chip/sensor implant? Thirty people looking at the same advertising space, simultaneously seeing thirty different advertisements. (I originally thought of this some years back in regards to store windows in Manhattan that have a dozen or so TV screens advertising some product -- each person seeing different images on the same set of screens).
It's amazing how unbelieving mankind can discover more and more that information is not material -- that the material is simply the conduit for the information -- for the codes, instructions, schematics, dna -- and continue to struggle with God creating by His Word. But, then I remember, I only see because God opened my eyes.
Wow, I'm just seeing how the billboard example is a shadow of a relationship in Messiah (or not). When we are in Christ -- the billboards of our life reveal different things than when we are lost ... or walking in the flesh. And we need to be plugged in to God and His Word to see those billboards and signposts and arrows that bring us closer to Him and allow us to enter into works that He's prepared for us from the foundation...all the while, becoming less plugged in-- or vested -- in the things/cares of this world.
Interesting conversation.
God bless--
Lee
Marshal Mcluhan stated once: "The medium is the message." Someone more recently has updated that to "You are the message." (Getting there by going "You are the medium which is the message").
This has been a thought that has been floating in the back of my own mind too. I read somewhere about something called had "Red" in the title - you either swallowed something, or injected this whatever it was...it entered your blood stream or body and allows you to physically become the conduit for transferring digital information from one place to another: e.g. Pictures from your camera transfer through you to your computer.
I think quite a plausible thought.