The Future Human

How will people interact with technology in the future? (Short speculation)

Today, people interact with technology in many facets of their lives. The commercial use of wearable devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) is growing, as people wear smart watches such as Fitbits to track their activity, control and monitor their homes using the Nest app, or converse with Alexa about everything and anything. But what’s next?

Physical Enhancements

In terms of enhancing the physical body beyond its natural ability, work has been and is already being done in this realm. For example, the SuitX created an exoskeleton to aid those with mobility disorders, while Ekso Bionics created an exoskeleton to prevent worker injury when lifting heavy items. Both of these exoskeleton suits are incredibly expensive, but used to either prevent injury or empower those affected by injury. It will be interesting to see the direction of these suits as the technology becomes more affordable.

Cognitive Enhancements

When looking at the cognitive side of the future human, current work exists in Brain Machine Interfaces (BMIs) by stimulating the brain through EEG and tDCS to improve brain functionalities. For instance, BrainCo has developed EEG headbands for students to track attention and to enhance focusing abilities. Another company, Halo Neuroscience, has created sports headphones with tDCS built in to accelerate physical training gains in strength, endurance, and skill. The development of BMIs is incredibly interesting, because there is still so much we have yet to understand about the brain. While technologies such as EEG, fMRI, and fNIRS exist to measure and stimulate brain activities, we not uncovered the exact mechanisms behind many brain functions. Take depression for example: depression affects millions of people worldwide, but we still do not fully understand how or why it occurs. Perhaps in the future, when we have a better understanding of the brain, the growth of BMIs will take off even further beyond enhancing our physical and mental learning abilities to predict, prevent, and communicate certain mental states with other people. Then BMIs could be used to communicate non-verbally with those around us.

Security and Accessibility

While speculation about the Future Human and our interactions with technology can be endless and fun, it is also important to consider security and accessibility issues as well. With the growing use of IoT sensors, data, data, and data, conversations about privacy and security increase too. When we use all kinds of sensors on the physical body and collecting brain-wave data, what constitutes as healthcare data and what constitutes as just general, physical data? How are individuals protected from outsiders seeing this personal information? In addition, technology can be amazing for those who can afford the luxuries, but how can the technology be dispersed to those who have a strong need but are without the means to purchase?