Humans evolved towards Borg or we will fall in love to own smartphone

Some days before, one post title caught my attention: “In The Future We Will All FallMadly in Love With Our Toasters” (by Tom Critchlow). He pondered about the relation between us and our electronic kits. I used word kit with the two senses because our relation with the smart phone is deeper than own sons.

What are a person when the lamp has the same reactions

Is Pinokio only a lamp?

It could possible to fall in love with the cat. However it’s a living being and gives you its senses and affection (cat sometimes, dog forever and ever). But toast is something and inanimate, nevertheless in this post shows the a little film (IsPinokio only a lamp? In Vimeo, but the extend version is linked below in Youtube) when the lamp take animation and interacted with our movements and expression. I remember an old cat that every morning climbed on Romba (sweeping robot) which carry it for all the house, but the most interest was seeing cat go to Romba when it was stop and remained at its side making companion (I don’t know if Romba cried when cat has death).

To take affection to anything makes us more humans, but smartphones its other history, and it has other perverse connotation. The Borg are a science-fiction alien species (Star Trek series) which is characterized by the obsession to homogenize and assimilate other forms of intelligent life which my have in the galaxy; they live in a kind of unique consciousness in which individuals are interconnected between them. They also have a system of absolute monarchy where the queen, like ants or bees, orders and makes decisions. But that system hasn’t any sense within this social organization; because this purpose, to make decisions, it would has this global consciousness. In short, as we invented the role of bees queens imitating humans monarch, while really they only have the task is to give birth eggs, and decisions are taken collectively each group of bees of the same tasks; the writers have created a queen imitating a social organization that doesn't exist, and at the same time it would be less operational.

Either way humans have a social structure based on circles, family, friends, acquaintances ... at the same time a pyramidal organization, based leaders, gregarious and gregarious of the gregarious. We like to be in contact group and we need this. But this usually has a handicap: our reasoning requires concentration and introspection. So the human being grows, first through what exchanges with the rest of their peers, and on the other with reflection alone with our own about what we see and experience.

Normally we have the image of the sage as one who flees the crowd. This makes sense because the crowd is addictive. If we remember the best moments of our lives we realize that almost none is alone. But the crowd or simply be accompanied requires being attentive to the evolution of the group, and that limits our action to simple linked or not to the dynamics of that group operational work. For study or reflection solitude is needed, although really the wise never is alone because otherwise he loses touch with reality and he will be going to mad.

The new social networks have increased worldwide awareness of almost exponentially to connect academics from all over the world. They feed back their findings, but to make a breakthrough everyone has to do their job. Even today where everything is done as a team, each member has their role that does alone, being the power of the group to coordinate work efficiently, at the same time comment or ask for help from classmates. Without introspection there isn’t mental growth.

But these networks, which at the end of the conch they are still a business, have been extended to the maximum possible customers. What is a communication facility has become an obsession. In any public transport we can see how many people call and ask a family member “How are you feeling?” Normally if you keep the conversation is someone who has seen few hours ago, continuing with these classic conversations that we make to can say something and keep talking.

Borg Queen

Although the technology to move forward with applications and bandwidth, it occurs something even more perverse. Today if we look at bus stops, waiting rooms or bars; we see a lot of people glued to their mobile, following lists of sentences with or without pictures attached. This is the Time List of different social networks, and while they are stuck to their life runs around them. Gradually their world is reduced to those lines attached to the image of an avatar which it occupies more and more time, reducing the time that one dedicates oneself. As I said it's addictive, it would become these social networks as a kind of endless colonies where everything you do is in perpetual company of your contacts.

As explained at the beginning of the Borgs are aliens (fictional) who haven’t own life because the whole hive is interconnected at all times. Surely we are far from the Borg or one similar to human Matrix existence, but if anyone starts making the effort to contain it, and our technology gets implemented mobile phone in our brain (which is not so far as it seems) before long we will live in hives like the Borg.