The Internet’s a funny old thing.
It connects people all over the world without them even noticing. In my online
life I often come across this phenomenon. People on Imgur or those posting
comments on a news article who seem to be oblivious to the global nature of the
net. A perfect example is the running joke on Imgur where a particularly odd,
creepy or vulgar picture is met with “It’s very early in the night for that!”
It usually seems to come from an American. Understandable since it’s an American
site and beyond that the English speaking world is very U.S centric because of
population alone. But I’m not American. And neither are huge portions of the
people who use the site. Very early in the night? No, maybe on your side of the
planet but here in Ireland its 2 am. I don’t think it’s an effect of the American
mind set. Although I have heard the term ‘Americans’ used instead of ‘people’ often
enough to make me worry about the place. I digress. Presumably the effect comes
from peoples’ tendency to assume that the username they’re corresponding with
is like them, from the same country, background and culture as them. I like to
think it’ll do wonders for cultural globalisation and racism. I’d imagine it’s
very hard to remain racist after you've met a few really nice, funny people
from the culture you supposedly despise. Back in the day when the only way to
communicate in real time with someone in another country was with an expensive
international call people curtailed most of that casual interaction to people
in their own neck of woods. In spite of air travel and telecommunications there
were still very real barriers between people in different countries. Even since
the internet it’s taken until relatively recently for truly global social networks
to come into their own. Now of course there’s very little separating people all
over the world, but the last few barriers need to be removed. That’s where telepresence
comes in.
The internet has long had the
whole world talking to each other. But the streams of messages can only do so
much. They do make the world smaller but not small enough. An obvious boon to
the world of communication comes in the form of VOIP programmes like the old
favourite Skype, Facebook video and many more. A great example of the usefulness
of these programmes came to me a few months ago. I was at a my grandmother’s
funeral where of her thirteen children only twelve could make it, the
thirteenth being in Australia. But thanks to Skype she was there. There was a smart phone being passed around the
graveyard with her face on the screen. She saw what it saw and was able to
accept condolences from many confused and bemused seventy somethings standing
in the drizzle in a graveyard in rural Ireland while she sat at a laptop in New
South Wales in the middle of the night. It’s a comforting image.
Sharing kind words isn’t the only
use for telepresence technology of course. DaVinci System is a robot arm which can
perform delicate surgery when controlled by a surgeon either in the same room
or across the Atlantic. The fact that the surgeon is five time zones away is no
longer an issue. Equally impressive is the use of human controlled robots to explore
dangerous or uninhabitable places. Virginia Tech’s Thor robot is being
developed to navigate and explore disaster zones such as earthquakes. Such a
machine would be especially useful in disasters similar to Fukushima. NASA’s Robonaut
is a robot for operating on the outside of the International Space Station. The
idea being that it will be able to cut down the number of dangerous space walks
needed to repair and upgrade the station and other satellites. Telepresence technology
is changing the world in many subtle yet powerful ways. Its gets people to
where they need or want to be without ever moving them. It makes the world a smaller
place and it breaks down the barriers and differences between people. Hopefully
to the point where there will be none.
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