POST 3: INDIVIDUAL WORK ON 'THE IDEA OF PROGRESS' VIEWED THROUGH HIGH TECH PRODUCTS

Smart Cities

This document is a video (documentary or campaign maybe) about Barcelona becoming a Smart City. It was published in January 2014, 8 months ago so it is very a very recent project although it is already working. This video is about how big cities in the world (here, the example is Barcelona) use high technology to make the city a nicer place to live in and an easier access to it.

When you first watch the video, what catches the eye at first sight are all the new "connections" that are available in the city. We can see for example some kind of digital box and a ben which is there to show at how many percent it is filled. This, for example, is part of the enviromental progress of the city and also esthetic.

Next, the voice over says that in big cities, 40% of the trafic is caused by cars trying to find a parking place. The solution to this problem has been found and we can see it in the document: inground parkment sentors can comunicate with devices to inform the desperate driver where to find a free parking place, and how many parking places are left in a certain area. This is a big progress for cities because it means less cars moving in the cities. If you think about it twice, finding a parking place fast means using less your car, and if you multiply this by the number of cars that are used in the city, it makes a considerable change for the environment. Less cars, less polution.

Afterwords, they talk about "connecting" the city and its citizens. By installing free wifi in buses, metro, and creating these new "smart bus stops", it is more easy and less stressfull to use metro and buses, and it gives people a reason to use their car less and less. These connections, added to the apps on smartphones that already exist, give you the exact amount of time you need to wait for your bus or your metro, and helps you find the best itinerary to go from a place to another. Also, at the beginning of the video, we can see an app, on a smartphone, that can tell the weather. With wifi connection in almost all the city, citizens can know what is the weather at any time of the day, instead of waiting for the weather cast on T.V in the evening. This wifi connection also makes them feel like their are home because they have the same fast network then in their houses.

Barcelona is installing highly efficient street lights, which makes the city a safer, nicer and more ecological place. This new light technology is saving a great amount of energy, which is one of the most important upsides of these new Smart Cities.

This document shows us how we can use new technologies in the best way we can, not only for pleasure, but for social, econominc and environmental betterment. The Smart Cities give to the citizens an easier and nicer access to the city and a very modern lifestyle, but also works on preserving the planet from pollution and waste.

POST #1: A CARTOON

The Fanatic Geek



The document we have here is a cartoon called The Fanatic Geek by Patrick Chapatte in 2008. It tackles the issue of technological progress slowing down the movie business.

What catches the eye at first sight is the Cannes logo we can see in the top left hand corner. The cartoon is made up of a drawing and a balloon. We can see a man, obviously a film director, who maybe looks a bit like Sean Penn with cow-boy boots and sunglasses, on the red carpet with a blond woman in a very fancy dress, signing an autograph to a fan of his. The fan is telling the director that he loves his movies and that he's pirated them all, meaning he didn't pay to watch them, doing illegal downloading by using the internet.

By drawing this cartoon, the author wants to show the world one of the downsides of the internet and technological progress.
He aims to criticize the "génération Y" as we call it in French, the generation of people born in the 90's who not only have easy access to all the new technology but grew up with them so can use them very easily. This generation doesn't go into stores to buy a CD or a movie on DVD to watch it at home on their TV. They just pirate them, which means download them for free and watch their movie on their computer. I think what the author is trying to say here is that this generation not only disrespects the art industry in general and slows it down by not buying anything, but it also cannot appreciate a good movie on a big screen with friends or family. The author is describing in only one cartoon a whole generation of loners who do not open themselves enough to the world.

I personally think it is very well thought and that the author found a good way to caricature this generation or the downsides of technological progress if you prefer because nowadays the internet and all this technological progress is seen like a blessing to our society while some sides of it are actually bad for it.

We can relate this document to the notion of progress because piracy is something we can do nowadays in the 21st century now that we have technological progress, which we didn't have in the 20th century. It shows how the progress of the movie industry for example is held down by technological progress, so this cartoon, in a way, represents 2 types of progress.

POST 3: INDIVIDUAL WORK ON 'THE IDEA OF PROGRESS' : The Google Glass.

This video is the official presentation of the Google Glass. It is in fact a sort of add for the Google Glasses, wich are glasses designed by Google. But actually, theese are not regular glasses. They are "intelligent" glasses that work like a phone. On this video, we can see a man who wakes up (we never see his face, actually we watch the whole video through his eyes, wich means, through the glasses, because he is wearing the glasses), and starts the day like a normal person: he drinks his coffee, eats a sandwich, and make plans for the day... But the way he makes plans is completely unknown and surprising, and crazy for somebody who doesn't kow what the video is about: he answers messages and take notes... on his glasses! Just by talking, the glasses are interacting like a phone, because of a mini camera on the side of the glasses.

These glasses are in fact "internet glasses": they are designed so that whatever the person who has the glasses on needs to know, if asks it, the glasses will give him the answer, just like if he was using his computer or his phone, but the difference is, the user doesn't even need to do anything, just to talk.211

This innovation is a revolution for the world; after the T.V, the computer, the internets, and the smartphones, each of them a big step for man in the world of new technologies, but every time for smaller objects, here comes the smart glasses: these glasses are not only a computer that you put on your eyes, it also represents, maybe, the end of the "homed geek" because you can use them anywhere and at any moment, even while you are walking... 

I think that anybody who sees this video wil first think "no, that can't be possible, it's to perfect, it's what humans were trying to create for hundreds of years, so it has to have a problem", but when you look back and realize ten years ago, nobody even had smartphones, you think "oh, then maybe it is possible". The world may go to fast for some people but progress is one great thing that today, we are happy to have and to use in our lives.

This is what the Google Glass looks like.