While living in 2022 and thinking about the future is quite exhilarating to consider where life will be heading on and in what ways, technology will have repercussions on our daily activities and what are precautionary measures to take for the safety of the future for our next generations. The future will be full of opportunities, resources, advancements, and developments on one hand, while on the other side of the picture, there will also be shortcomings, destruction, and anxieties. Now, take into account both aspects in a more detailed manner.
Hyperreality is known to be the convergence of the physical and digital worlds and collapsing of the distinction between reality and the imaginary world. Today, human behavior is shaped by technology in such a virtual world, now it’s even hard for kids, to think about life without luxuries and online gadgets such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube.
The imaginary world in past has become real for the present world. People have created new online communities and friendships through digital avatars and online identities. Physical connection is lost due to online interactions via digital pixels, video calls, zoom, and google world which is an online persona far away from real life, that creates an augmented reality by overtaking illusory as actual. A global Pandemic like COVID has also accelerated the shift towards e-commerce, online orders and payments, and video conferencing. Moreover, people have also created new commercial and business opportunities through the digital world such as OLX, Daraz, TikTok, and Vlogging. It seems like the online world, for our time, resources, and mindfulness is competing with the physical world.
Furthermore, on social media, we see the pictures of celebrities through their Photoshop images, body modifications, camera pixels, filters, and editing which is also hyperreal because we perceive their personalities through the digital world not who they truly are which leads one toward identity crises, confusion, and deception due to lost originality, individuality, and true essence. Mobile phones are also hyper-real products as they collect demographic, geographic, social, and behavioral information. In addition to it, After watching cartoons and animated movies such as Miraculous, Doraemon, Chhota Bheem, and Disney Land, our children start imitating their Shakti or questioning religion and God by mesmerizing their power to mold the situation and controlling the world according to their own will, can get back to past or can imagine future or change the weather or invisible themselves which demonstrates how reality is suppressed under such fantasies and visionary world.
Through such a hyper-real world, our generation is unable to address the real world with its real-life issues and hardships. Hyperreality provides a person, with life perfectly according to one’s needs and interests. By just clicking the online world, full charms and versatile allurements are there for you which put forth a purposeless life for our youngsters. Sadly, Pornography and Sex doll Brothels are also the advancements in technology to satisfy one’s need through such a delusional world, obscenity, and overexposure as Marshall McLuhan highlights that we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us. We should not ignore the radical changes in human behavior perpetuated by artificial intelligence. Thus the binary between reality and its representation has been blurred. Moreover, News media has also become hyperreal by creating manipulative realities due to the distorted lens of biases and prejudices. So, the power hegemonic hierarchies who have control over spreading information, disguise the reality by steering the process according to their own created directions.
Alvin B. Kernan’s in The Death of Literature (1990) accentuates pessimistically that due to overindulgence in technology, students are relying so much on soft copies which dismantle the interests of book lovers. Today, it is believed that technology and artificial intelligence pave new domains in literature and offers new horizons for reading such as Twitterature, Twitter Fiction, vending machine poetry, and holographic machines. Books will be written by machines, termed computational creativity, which diminishes the human role. Sunshine Misses Windows is the first book of poetry written by the artificial intelligent algorithm Xiaoice or Microsoft Little Ice, published by the Chinese, Cheers Publishing Company in 2017.
Moreover, “Shehr-e- Tabassum” is an eight-minute-long animated film which is set in 2071. It drives attention toward what life would be like In 2071 which will be quite terrific and destructive. The fictional future with horror, fear, and anxiety is depicted through certain images such as the digital world, flying rickshaws, constant surveillance, an emotionless society, repressed freedom of expression, and the use of a smile as the only remedy for oppression and depression. In such a modem world, Artificial intelligence and technology are used as digital imperialism and a mode of hegemony by its controllers of the online world also known as digital tyrants, well highlighted by Shoshana Zuboff in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019). So, there should be a rhetoric of resistance against such data colonialism. Critical engagement towards digital technologies is crucial in such a mechanic world. Furthermore, Aldous Huxley published his dystopian novel Brave New World in 1932 which highlights the harmful impacts of technology, the decadence of moral values, chaos in relationships, capitalism, and totalitarianism in human society. Additionally, he describes that technology and medication in the future, will control reproduction through “surgical removal of ovaries” and there will be only the use of sex and drugs, to achieve happiness.
After shedding light on the negative repercussions of technology and Artificial intelligence on human life, its positive influences cannot be ignored. Art will be remote and more accessible than now. The competition will become tougher as the future will be beneficial for those students who can find out the solutions to real issues rather than only being limited to grading in their educational career. There will be a vast growth of urban cities and a person feels himself in between the intertwined era of the digital world and the real world. He will get everything on his doorstep which he will require because these services will be given by automatic smart cars, shuttle pods, and aerial drones. Household chores and their maintenance will be held by robots.
Artificial intelligence will also be used for decolonization and pave way for the Indigenous future. It empowers indigenous people to create their future, identity, and discourse which places them at the center rather than only relying on the margins especially in western texts as highlighted by Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction(2012). Ulrich Eberl, a technology journalist has written a futurology book on Life in 2050 which is published in 2011. The enlightening facts and figures regarding the life of 2050 are as followed. In 2050, there will be power plants in inaccessible places like the Sahara Desert. Network society will be brought to the moon and space and the communication system will occur through glass sheets and clouds without any need for communication towers.
In Short, everything has its pros and cons. So, Artificial intelligence should be used more for human productivity rather than destruction to make a brighter future for our young generation through advancements and technological developments not making them insane by becoming blind followers of its negativity.
