SS Divergent Streams

 

As Rhettburg discussed in the chapter, the genres included in electronic literature continue to grow as technology grows and changes. Technology directly affects the way that art is produced, consumed, and viewed. This can especially be seen with the emerging sectors of VR and AR. VR and AR allow us to bridge the gap between imagination and reality and be immersed in a virtual, illusionary reality. This technology is rapidly improving and is already part of our daily lives, as we saw with the boom of pokemon go. Some critics even say that AR will outpace VR because it allows people to interact with the existing world and be aware of their surroundings at the same time because VR can sometimes trick the brain into doing dangerous things while emersed in the sensation, like falling or harming others. Another way AR is being implemented into our lives, the most prevalent way I would say, is through filters. Snapchat, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, zoom, and any hosting site that allows you to 1) show yourself through a camera and 2) use cameras as a method of conveying information like social media sites, have filters. These filters augment users' faces by scanning their faces and adding effects to the recognized features such as enhancing eye color or adding horns to your head or activating through a motion, like opening your mouth. 

This brings me to my horrifying example: Augmented reality without consent. The US military has recently started playing with AR as a means to train its soldiers. The technology, called TAR, tactical augmented reality, is an eyepiece that helps soldiers precisely identify their target's location and their own. The plan for the future of TAR is to replace night vision goggles with them as TAR allows soldiers to see in the dark. The TAR is wirelessly attached to a tablet on the soldier's waists and connected to a thermal site on their weapons. If the solider points their weapon at their target or image of their target, the distance to the target, it the target is a friend or foe and other details can be seen through the eyepiece. Here's a video of the technology on display:

army video

This is terrifying in my opinion but it reminded me of ( I know I'm a broken record ) a Black Mirror episode, more specifically, Season 3 Episode 5 "Men Against Fire". This episode is about a soldier who lives in the near future hunting down his targets, humanoid mutants known as roaches. The roaches are horribly disfigured and look nothing like humans. A neural chip has been implanted into every soldier in the army, known as MASS, which monitors their health, and geographic position, and provides data to the soldier. What the soldier, named Stripe, does not know is that it also alters his vision. The roaches were regular human beings, targeted because of their political status and their ethnicity. No one in the army knows except him. It is a genocide justified by the Army. Eventually, he faces a choice to be either jailed or have his memory wiped.