Virtually Angelic: Ethereal and Data

There is little doubt that over the course of history we have had many new media prophets. Classic examples of this would include McLuhan and Licklider. These prophets foresaw the development of a technological world that surrounded us, became one with use and stretched our senses further than ever imagined. They believed that this technology would both become integral and conducive to human existence.

Margret Morse proposed that cyberspace may very well have a gender while Brenda Laurel suggested the computer was more than just an experience in efficiency but a virtual theatre which puts on a show. Finally we have Jorge Borges that suggested the idea of hypertext through his Garden of Forking Paths and a labyrinth of possible futures.

Oddly enough I don’t think that any of them foresaw the technology that we have today. In space we have satellites that are in constant orbit around us, covering us like shiny, cold security blankets. These mechanical astral sentinels ever watch over us and provide us with services that have become integral to our hyperpaced technological existence. Daemian even proposed the idea early in the quarter and even in the last discussion how we’ve become so very accustomed to cellular phones that many of us cannot feel whole without it steadfastly attached at our hips.

In speaking of cellular phones I thought of a technology that is prevalent today and is often overlooked. Guardian Angel is a cellular phone GPS technology that allows the subscribers to track the possessors of cellular phones anywhere, anytime with the click of a mouse. This service provides an assortment of data from the phones location to the speed at which it is traveling if the phone is in transit and it keeps a history of this data so that the administrator of the account and review it at any time.

http://www.guardianangeltech.com/

What would our prophets say about this technology? Would McLuhan suggest that it was inevitable with the advents of satellites and the globalization of awareness? How about Licklider? Would he maintain that this is evidence of the symbiosis of man and machine, a combination of man and cellular phone that puts the person in instant contact with anyone worldwide at any given moment and makes information instantly accessible? How would Morse’s view of gender interpret this technology? Is this a cyber allusion to the motherly instinct to protect her young or a patriarchal example of Big Brother syndrome? What kind of story can be told by the history of this data and is this anyway related to the theatre that Laurel was talking about? Even still, is Borges idea of hypertext presented here where a phone and its possessor’s location unveil with the click of a hyperlink?

I can’t begin to predict how these new media prophets would react to this technology but I can see how each of them, in their own way, contributed to the possibilities we see here. I suppose it’s all food for thought really.