For this blog post I decided to watch and reflect on The Island, a science-fiction movie starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson that came out in 2005.  Lincoln Six Echo (McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Johansson) live in a compound that enforces strict rules and monitors all aspects of their lives. They, along with the rest of the people within the compound, are led to believe that the rest of the outside world is contaminated, except for one island. Every few days one member of the compound is “randomly” selected to go to the island based on a lottery system, and everyone else must wait until they eventually win the lottery.

Spoiler alert: There is no island. The compound is in fact a holding ground for clones, where they wait in complete ignorance until they are harvested for body parts. “Winning the lottery” means that the sponsor, the real life version, is sick, and needs the clone’s body parts to survive. The clones are kept completely in the dark, but as are the sponsors out in the real world, who have been told that the clones will have no feelings or thoughts, which is entirely untrue. When Lincoln Six Echo and Jordan Two Delta uncover the conspiracy, they escape from the compound into the outside world. Action and light romance ensues.

The movie is set in 2019, and I think it is safe to say that we will not all have our own personal clones in the next five years. That being said, some of the technological aspects in the film are actually popping up in today’s society. In the movie, each clone’s health and diet are monitored rigorously. In the opening scene Lincoln Six Echo has to do a urine test that reveals he has high sodium, and so his diet is controlled based on that information: the people on the compound are only allowed to eat food that is healthy for them and food is seen as fuel, not a source of enjoyment.

Although in our society it is more of a choice, many people have taken to diligently monitoring their caloric intake. Websites like caloriecounter.com and tracking devices like the FitBit make this form of self-tracking easy and accessible, and are used to help people lose or manage their weight.

An obvious technological leap in this film is the widespread use of clones. Although the technology is nowhere near ready yet, in May 2013 scientists were able to create the first ever-cloned human embryo. An article in Popular Science explained that they did this using the same process that created Dolly the sheep in 1996. DNA from the test subject’s skin cells were used to create the embryo, and in future such a clone could be a source of stem cells. The scientists working on the project did stress that the embryo would not be able to actually grow into a human being.

In conclusion, The Island portrayed a dystopian version of the world, where anyone can live for an extra thirty years, as long as they are willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money to have them self cloned. Although in today’s society it is still not possible to clone a human being, the moral debate wages on about whether it is ethical to even push towards that, and this film highlights some of the negative aspects, mainly how dangerous it can be if scientific advances are misused.

Lastly, it’s important to note that The Island is a good movie. You should all see it. Even if I’ve completely spoiled the plotline. (Sorry about that.)

In The Virtual Self: How Our Digital Lives Are Altering The World Around Us, Nora Young explores the concept of self-tracking, and how technology is changing the way people track and register information. Using examples that range from Benjamin Franklin’s journal entries to the social media posts that helped pinpoint the location of a pipe-bomb in 2010, Young identifies different methods of self-tracking that increase self-awareness and make people more accountable for the way they spend their time.

One thread of this self-tracking relates to weight management. As Young explains, “the Web is rich with services to help us lose weight and stay fit through recording our diet and exercises” (16). This is critical technology considering Canada’s ever expanding waistband. With over 20% of females and over 40% of males self-identifying as overweight in a 2011 Statistics Canada analysis, we can use all the help we can get.

In The Virtual Self, Young identifies several technologies that are helping people shed pounds, such as FitBit, a small wrist monitor that tracks calories, exercise and even sleep by using 3-D motion sensors. There are also countless websites, such as FitDay.com, dedicated to giving specific information about the nutritional information for different foods in order to make it easier to keep tabs on how many calories they consume in a day.

A new trend, not mentioned by Young, is the development of apps designed to make exercise more fun. An example is the app “Zombies, Run!” that makes a workout less of a chore and more of a game. The runner’s goal is to save the lives of the people at the “base” by locating critical supplies. Using a series of dynamic radio messages interspersed with the runner’s own music, the runner is forced to randomly pick up their pace – or even sprint¬ –¬ to avoid a zombie attack. There are over 100 different missions available with the app, 40 of which are free.

Technologies like this are changing the way we look at exercise, and are making us more accountable for our behaviors. Websites like habitforge.com monitor a person’s goals, and send them daily reminders to keep them motivated.

I myself went through the process of significant weight loss. At the age of 16 I was pushing 200 pounds, and was tired of feeling self-conscious and alienated. As a competitive swimmer I exercised daily, but had a large appetite that favoured McDonald’s BLTs over fruits and vegetables. Losing weight was a difficult and lengthy process, but keeping track of my energy input and output made it easier.

At the time, I had never heard of websites to help track such things, so I relied upon “guesstimation”, adding up my own totals everyday. Over the course of eight months, through increased exercise and careful eating, I managed to lose 55 pounds, bringing me into the “normal” weight category for my height. Four years later, I have still managed to maintain my goal weight, though I did stop monitoring my diet constantly after the first year – I found it was taking away from the experience of eating. Young expresses that same concern, saying that it can feel like, “sources of bodily delight and physical expressiveness, such as running or eating a meal, are reduced to stats-driven, objectified activities.” (18) That being said, I found it a useful tool to better manage what types of food I could use to fuel my body.

Self-tracking can be particularly useful for patients trying to return to exercise after an injury. The Virtual Self discusses Carlos Rizo, who started self-tracking after a serious accident in 2006 left him in pain for several years. He began tracking as a way of recording his pain – what helped or what made it worse – but over the course of his healing process he began to use it to track his re-entry into the exercise world. Now, eight years after the accident, he tracks his calories, workouts and bike rides. The pain, thankfully, is no longer an issue.

In The Virtual Self, Young examines various uses of tracking technology, some of which could greatly improve the health of users. From the asthma inhalers that have a GPS to better monitor where flare-ups occur, to Twitter feeds that pin-point and monitor the spread of infectious diseases, there are many opportunities to advance our health through tracking technology.

I found The Virtual Self well-written and packed with historical and contemporary examples. It opened my eyes to opportunities available to me, many readily accessible through the Internet or my I-phone. Young puts it nicely, “Self-tracking is our gin. It’s an almost impulsive desire to document the actual states of being and physical presence” (83). If that’s the case, we can all drink up.

Until doing the course readings this week, I had no idea what augmented reality even was. After doing a Wikipedia search the basic definition was that it uses technology to enhance one’s current perception of reality. Whether augmented reality is being achieved by wearing Google glasses that allow you to video chat with friends and give them a direct representation of what you are seeing, or a headset that places images of both the physical and virtual world in front of your field of view, there are countless technologies promising to change the way we see the world.

In “Ok, Glass” Shteyngart discussed the experience of being one of the few people who was given an opportunity to try out Google glasses. It is apparent that they would be immensely useful, allowing a person to record and take pictures of much of what they were seeing, as well as share that information with others. I did question the ethical implications of that software though. I feel like if someone walked by wearing the glasses I would actually feel quite uncomfortable, not sure if they were filming those around them. Sure, pinhole cameras have existed for decades, but to me those are reserved for spies, or for over protective mothers trying to catch their nanny feeding their kids junk food, I wouldn’t expect to run into that out on the street. Shteyngart mentioned that he signed up for all of the news publications he was able to (New York Times, CNN and Elle), but soon there will be a lot more offered for the Google glasses.

According to an article on CNET, an Israeli start up hopes to bring features like face and voice detection to smart glasses.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57617653-76/infinity-ar-well-fulfill-sci-fi-promise-of-augmented-reality/

In case you don’t feel like reading the article, the gist of the message is that in the next three months the company (Infinity AR) is hoping to be able to launch a free app called the Brain for smart glasses. They plan on making their money by ad revenue, but the ads will be tailored to the person who is wearing them, making them “useful” (or that’s there way of avoiding the word “annoying”) The Brain app hopes to provide useful services that aren’t already offered, most notably being able to judge the mood of others based on their tone of voice, or conduct face recognition based on information the person has already given.

Now to me, that just seems like an unfair social advantage. While the rest of us scan our brains desperately trying to remember the name of the petite blonde in front of us is – is it Kylie? Carol? She told you like a hundred times – these privileged individuals could simply rely on their glasses to do the remembering for them. Not to mention being able to gauge others precise mood. It almost reminds me of playing Sims as a child, where I could see the little percentage bars that tell you how much the other characters liked me and would desperately try to make the fictional love interest like my character. Will that be next? Will glasses be able to tell that the petite blonde, who’s name was actually Sofia, likes you 64% but finds you 12% annoying and 24% boring?

I also worry that they would be a distraction from the outside world. If the wearer is being constantly updated about news stories or sales at their favourite store, wouldn’t that make it harder to pay attention to the people around them or the task at hand? Already when you walk around so many people are completely wrapped up in their cellphone, but with smart glasses all that information is even easier to access, and I would worry that if they became affordable it could seriously change the way people interact with one another.

That being said, though, I do think it is pretty darn cool.