Visual Futurist

Dave Hall - Wyeth Modified

The linear narrative of the development and progression of a technology such as the mobile phone for example, would be present, micro/miniature, implanted. The interesting part of the concept is not the technology itself but the sociological and psychological effects of the technology. The injected or implanted communication device could lead to so called “Digital Telepathy" and this could mean the end of loneliness and also the end of privacy as we know it. In the condition of no loneliness and no privacy the design of the everyday world would take on to our eyes strange procedures and objectives.

The concept of the end of privacy in relation to architecture for example would be a very different structure than we know today.

Please take a look at one of the following and write a discourse and make an analysis of the technology and its sociological effects.

1 - The Perfect Day - When Computer simulations become real
2 - Love Hotels and Electronics - The future of Pleasure
3 - Cultural Shifts - Cinema defines the 20th century Games define the 21st

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This is a short story by E.M. Forster. It predates most of the modern worlds communication technologies ( the internet by nearly 100 years ). However its remarkable how many elements in the story have a resonance today.

THE MACHINE STOPS
by E.M. Forster (1909)
"Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk-that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh-a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.

An electric bell rang.........................."

http://www.plexus.org/forster/index.html

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