A TED Talk That Made Me Feel Terrible About Myself

He might have colorful fingertips, but his heart is black.

I was watching a TED Talks video the other day about a new device that would make literally every inanimate object interactive and every living object transparent.

The device is called SixthSense Technology, hopefully not a prophetic name, whereby users wear a large, embarrassing camera-equipped device around their necks. The camera takes in images and the small, wearable computer gives back information.

For example, one could hold up a book and the computer would project anywhere onto it Amazon reviews, prices, excerpts, etc.

Or, a consumer looking to determine which brand of toilet paper to buy could hold up several different packages to the camera. In return, the computer would project ratings, based on their personal preferences, denoting which toilet paper is best to purschase.

SixthSense is capable of projecting specific keywords onto a person that describes who they are such as their name, profession, hobbies and, one would could only hope, their reputation (think SLUT).

In the TED Talks clip SixthSense’s inventor explained the product. Afterwards she and her intern received a standing ovation.

Sitting there, I felt not only disheartened in my fickle efforts to simply entertain people, but for a brief moment I realized these nerdy innovators are the only important people making things.

I looked down at my BlackBerry then, as if it were an extension of myself, and waited for the small device to acknowledge me in some way. But I realized I don’t give a damn about the object itself. I care about the people the object connects me to.

If a potato could deliver a message that someone loved me, I would hold it in as high regard as my $500 cellphone and would search for a better-looking potato, only because I like things that look good.

In a matter of two minutes after the standing ovation ended, I resolved within myself that the extreme interest, money, accolade and obsession with technology is entirely misguided.

Imagine living in the most expensive, high-tech home possible. Apple products abound, and on any one of these devices you get the news your mom died or that someone loves you. The organic response to either of these experiences surpasses the interest we have in the object in which we received that information.

It’s natural to entirely forget your surroundings all together and fixate only on your mother or your lover in that situation. (Hopefully not the same person.)

There doesn’t appear to be much promise in creating technology equal to and exchangeable with human intelligence when we will never be able to truly cross the oxymoronic divide of synthetic human emotion. This above all of is what drives us—so why is it focused on the least?

I also realized then, looking at my phone, that writing or art in any form is as close as people get to replicating human emotion and any efforts to rouse those emotions aren’t fickle, but genuine.

I came across a Newswer headline today reporting American pessimism has risen. Naturally, as with anything in this country, it was referring to politics, another fixation entirely misguided.

People are often sad and angry. People dwell on being sad and angry even when they aren’t because it’s easier and more interesting to idle in these emotions than it is to accept that not everything sucks.

For that reason humanity has created obscene amounts of distractions. The older civilization gets the more technologically advanced our distractions have become. We’ve reached the point that we can no longer separate the connections and emotions our devices bring us from the devices themselves. That is, I’d rather focus on the technology of being happy than the technology of a computer I can’t afford to buy.

Nice things do not make me happy. I’d take a wheat field, puppies and love making (not to the puppies) over an iPad anytime.

My future occupation won’t make me rich, I’ll never get a standing ovation and nothing I make will ever light up and expand on walls using just my finger tips. But I don’t care—if Americans are pessimistic from the lifestyle they’ve spent millions to create than I’ll be happily disconnected from it all.