We are the Guinea Pigs of Tomorrow’s Technology
I had the opportunity to host my cousins over at weekend during my short vacation at home. One of them brought her baby girl and I had the first hand view once again, as a young priest, to see how diapers are changed. My mother told me before that I used the lampin instead of diapers so it was something new to me.
My niece was suffering from rashes and I thought that it’s weird that after all these years, diapers still cause rashes. My younger cousins did wear diapers before and diapers must have improved over the years. They must have more rashes than my niece, so I thought.
Diapers are also technological innovations, albeit in childcare. It is the nature of human technology to evolve over time, for by nature man needs to grow to become more efficient, and so his tools too. As contemporary thought realized, technology causes disruption. Whenever something new crops up, it changes things, it changes behaviors, it changes society. Diapers overwhelmed the lampin and changed how we take care of babies and their soiled undergarments.
Unbeknownst to my cousins then, they were the test subjects of today’s technology. Their rashes became the standard against which technology had to improve against. Beyond rashes, our complaints against current tech serves the same purpose. What we lack today is what the technology of tomorrow will seek to provide. Inconveniences sting, but without a present need there is no motivation to innovate and improve.
I write this piece not because of diapers and rashes but that it just piqued my curiosity of what the landscape of tomorrow will be. There is always a veil that covers the future and only the visionaries see through the fog. But it is in the needs of today that the future’s dies are cast.
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