The magic of technology

Let us fast forward a bit to a time when those of us in the developed world are wearing our forthcoming variants of Google Glass. Bear with me here.

Rather than staring down at iPhones as we walk blithely into oncoming traffic, we will be looking forward, heads held high, while augmented reality displays give us power-up knowledge of the world around us, and unobtrusive bone-conductance microphones whisper messages that only we can hear.

In this brave new world, our personal video cameras will be recording every passing moment — buildings, stores, cars, passers-by — and helping us to interpret the many things that pass into our field of view.

Yet we will not be alone. For our fashionable head-mounted device will be connect to the internet, and the internet is connect to the world.

Somewhere far away, where the average wage is perhaps one hundredth our own, some brilliant individual — perhaps a young person of unbounded promise but with no real future — will be paid three dollars a day to interpret what we see, to whisper in our ear, to point out objects in our view, suggest paths we may take, opportunities for purchase, ways forward that we ourselves may never have thought of.

To this young person the opportunities will seem like a dream. For a wage far greater than anything she could have imagined, she will see sights beyond the dreams of anyone in her third world village. A glimpse into a fabulous world where everyone can afford a car, where a movie costs more than a month’s salary, and where universal education is guaranteed.

We, of course, will not quite be aware of this person’s existence. We will simply chalk it all up to the magic of technology. “How,” we might ask ourselves, “did my augmented reality device know to send me to this particular store on this particular day? It is truly marvelous what they can do with computers these days!”