Ubiquitous Computing and Surveillance society

Have you ever wondered if our physical world totally interconnected with data or virtual world? It will happen when there is a fusion between physical and digitally world. Andreas Schleicher said ““The next step is to Internetable physical objects — connecting people with things and even things with things. The Internet of Things will enable connectivity not just between people and their computing devices, but between actual, everyday things. By enabling connectivity for virtually any physical object that can potentially offer a message, the Internet of Things will affect every aspect of life and business in ways that used to be the realm of fantasy — or even beyond fantasy.” South Korea is an example. In Seoul, the ubiquitous city or Digital Media City is being implemented.

Future life style in human history is about to start. Ubiquitous computing covers a lot of aspects in our daily live from surveillance system to microchips for food. Some people say it is smart living system. The reason why it is called smart living system is rely on its capability to recognize our needs. Everything is contained in small sticker that will recognize our preferences for example, what food we like or book we would like to read.

Ubiquitous computing leads the emerging of surveillance society. Entire environment is merged together with internet. People as well as physical object would become readable. With the use of wireless electronic devices, people information and their location will be stored and easily monitored. The chance is getting bigger now that everything could be exposed. 

Ubiquitous computing brings an impact to the construction of social life. Society is become synchronous. Our surrounding will support whatever we like. Then, it will cause interdependence relation between human and the object. At the end, it fundamentally changes social practice. The fact is human is still human who enjoy the domination over another. The phenomena of ubiquitous computing and surveillance society provide more chance to be misused by wrong power to monopolize the game and gain some advantage of it.

Reference:
Taylor, D. (2007) Ubiquitous Computing May Build Ultimate Surveillance Society. [Online]. Available at: http://www.infowars.com/orwellian-ubiquitous-computing-may-build-ultimate-surveillance-society/ [Accesed: 10 November 2013]