A Digital Escape

A Digital Escape

	The future isn’t all rosy. Increasing pollution, overpopulation, poverty, and climate change – society’s impact on the earth is reaching a breaking point. And while we may work to slow the onset of these catastrophes, reversing them is no longer an option. The question becomes, how do we live with the troubles we’ve already caused?

http://www.frogdesign.com/news/frogconcept-a-digital-escape-05162008.html

"Increasing pollution, overpopulation, poverty, and climate change – society’s impact on the earth is reaching a breaking point"

There always seems to be a blind spot when considering societies impact. The Earth is a legitimate victim, but never any mention of the people as victims of their own societal structures. Even here, overpopulation & poverty are presented as a problem for the Earth.

	What if we used technology to not only combat this dangerous new environment – but also to escape from it? We already use mobile devices to provide on-demand escapism, channeling movies, music, and other distractions. Increased processing power and emerging technologies will enable holistic computing systems to be stored in wearable devices, providing a more immersive personal media experience. In a troubling future, these augmented reality devices would offer a new dimension - a virtual layer that could be used to “re-skin” the troubling outside world. A boundary between the wearer and the world around him, the device would become a sort of visual drug, used to make the world appear a better place – even if just for a moment.

This seems to be a manufactured equivalent of the reality mask we put over our consciousnesses anyway, or try not to if we can help it.

Just sharing the horror.



The 21st century version of rose colored glasses I guess.

First, climate change: I do not think humans have a terribly significant role in this. We're very egocentric. It's really not all about us. The planet has had bigger scourges than humanity and managed to rectify itself just fine. Mother Earth takes care of herself, we're just passersby.

Overpopulation & poverty: I think we're approaching a bottleneck which will take care of the overpopulation problem and in turn, poverty. This could be caused by disease, natural disaster, any number of terresterial or extraterrestrial events.