by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright February 2016
One of the deepest revolutions coming up in the 2050's is how profoundly wearables are going to change how we live and think.
In the 2010's wearables are monitoring vital signs as a person engages in various activities such as sports. But this is just the beginning. What will follow are two trends:
o much more precise monitoring of many different body functions
o adjusting those functions (this is like a pacemaker only much more diverse)
With this combination of abilities wearables are going to surpass drugs as the common way to intervene in health issues... and do much more!
Drugs will help out, but they will become second fiddle to wearables because they are much slower to adapt. A drug can be more beneficial if the adjusting doesn't require fast feedback and the effect can be long lasting -- vitamins and fighting infections will fall in this category.
If the adjusting involves fiddling with hormones or nerves on a minute-by-minute basis, wearables will do the adjusting much better than drugs can.
The commodity use of wearables is to maintain a body's good health, and to help it perform better when doing vigorous pushing-to-the-limit activities such as sports.
The surprise use of wearables is meddling with emotions. Emotions control, and are controlled by, hormones and the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is much simpler in operation than analytic level (conscious level) thinking. This means it can be deciphered more easily. And some time after it is deciphered it will be controllable by wearables.
So, yes, emotions will become controllable by wearables. ...Wow!
Controlling gut feelings has the potential to be as versatile as the skill of writing. It will be used for so many things. Here are a few that come quickly to mind:
o convincing people that something is a good/bad idea -- This is advertising and propaganda taken to a new level.
o romance -- This takes out all the uncertainty. It also takes out "Seven Year Itch", as in, changing one's mind about a person as aging takes its toll.
And it will allow a 2050's variant on arranged marriage. A couple can decide they are "made for each other" based on analytic thinking about good qualities such as compatible occupations, aspirations and lifestyles. That decided, they can then seal the deal with wearables that will make them mutually attractive at the emotional level.
How will this affect infidelity and monogamy... I don't know. It should have a big effect, but it will be a surprising one. As an example: infidelity could decline... or it could become irrelevant, as in, "Who cares anymore?"
o controlling irrational fears -- As an example: Fears of flying and terrorism are overblown. But that hasn't stopped them from twisting our social structures. If wearables are used to reduce irrational fears, then better social solutions can become acceptable. The big issue then becomes: What fears are irrational? (They don't feel irrational to the people feeling them.)
This will have as much influence on politics as the "convincing people" ability mentioned above does because so much of politics is about gut feelings, and fears in particular.
o stay on target -- This may be one of the later implementations. But if a wearable can strengthen persistence at an activity, it will make big differences in how people live. They can get much more disciplined.
o getting high -- The big wearable advantages over drugs are speed and versatility. One can get up and down in a minute or two, and the styles of getting up can be quite varied.
Wearables are going to make a huge difference in how we live and think in the 2050's. By manipulating how we think, they will control both small things such as day to day lifestyles, and really big things such as the structuring of social institutions. And by doing this they will make huge differences in how everyone lives.
--The End--