In contrast to my essay which contains theoretical debates, my blog attempts to deal with current issues in a slightly light hearted manner. The idea of analysing the development of the mobile phone and personal media players, as they should now be called, is to illustrate just how quickly the world we live in has transformed. The idea of contrasting the average day of a student today and 30 years ago was to demonstrate to what extent we rely on and use technology today. We rely so heavily on our mobile phones that it is difficult to imagine how we lived without them. The most significant change in the last 30 years is that today media technologies have followed us out of the home. If our phone isn’t in our pocket our iPod is playing music. If we are away from our desktop computer, we are sat on a train surfing the internet on a laptop. Technology has allowed platforms to become smaller, lighter, cheaper and in terms of computers, much faster. The evolution of technologies has had a massive impact on every form of culture which you can imagine. Anyone can now discuss their hobbies and interests on the internet and share ideas on any subject someone finds interesting. The recent success of websites such as facebook and myspace show how easily it now is to be creative and express yourself to a wide audience.

 I have merely scratched the surface of the issues surrounding the module. I think that the issue of increasing dependency on media technology is central to the all elements of the course. Although the work of Stelarc may appear far fetched, there are elements of his work which mirror genuine likely developments. Much of his work focuses on how the human body has become obsolete in light of fantastic new technological advances. For more on Stelarc go to www.stelarc.va.com/au 

On a smaller scale to Stelarc having an ear implanted to his arm, there are a number of ways in which humans are likely to ‘evolve’ in the future. It has been suggested that people will have microchips implanted which store credit data so they will need not carry a credit card with them. If this still sounds unfeasible, consider this – around 70 Americans have been implanted with a microchip to help identify them if they become lost and confused. Has the human body become so obsolete that we need the help of a microchip to identify us? A scary thought but one to look out for!