Threat of Robots in Our Jobs

Should we feel threatened by robots and fear them them taking over our jobs? Some experts say that it may still be a long time before certain jobs are seriously threatened but others swear that software development has come so far that there are a few jobs that will be gone within the next several years. One of them being toll booth operators and cashiers. When was the last time you went through a checkout with an actually person? Apple pay is making it easier to make payments and is paving the way for this type of technology. Get ready for robots to steal more manufacturing jobs from humans -- at a cheaper price and without taking breaks to text their friends. The Internet wiped out countless newspapers, and new technology could kill even more journalism positions. There will be algorithms that will allow for the automation of putting news stories online with minimal human interactions. Lastly, more and more people are getting rid of landlines. This means that there will be less job in that field because of the advances in digital communication services.

Technology and Pain

Pain relief without the help of medication may sound too good to be true, but a new startup says it has created a wearable that does just that. Medication can cause so many different and horrible side effects. A new device called Cur — created by a San Francisco-based startup of the same name — aims to provide an alternative to pain medication for people with chronic pain, such as carpal tunnel syndrome and fibromyalgia. The device is a version of the TENS unit which works by sending electrical currents to the brain which will minimize the pain signals and in turn the amount of pain that you feel. One of the best things about this device is that it does not have wires so it will be more convenient on the go. Central to the wireless functionality is the device's sensors, which measure individual muscle vibrations. These vibrations inform how much current the device delivers at any give time, though users can manually adjust the output if they wish. It could even be later programmed to be controlled by mobile applications.

Too Much Screen Time

When you go outside these days, does it seems like kids are more into their electronic devices than the actual playground they are at? They have that glazed look about them. According to a recent study, kids under the age of ten spend an average of a little over two hours a day on screen media such as mobile applications and shows. We have yet to know the long term effects of all this exposure but so far there are no indications that it will affect eyesight later in life. Some of the best things that you can do for your child is get them screened for eye diseases and limit screen time. I realize that limiting screen time might be easier said than done but there are a couple things that you could do. For starters, kids learn by example. How much time do you spend on the phone? Make an effort to limit your screen time and show the kids that there are other things to be done. Also, get them out of the house and onto a playground or in some sort of sport if they are old enough. This will help with development and make sure that they are healthy later in life. Any other suggestions?

Car Technology

There are self driving cars already that are street legal but would you ever get in one and let it drive you around? The software development might be incredible here but there still needs to be human input. The problem is that the input might be flawed because we have a tendency to go in that direction. A solution to this problem comes from the labs of Cornell and Stanford. Subtle movements of the head and body can indicate that a driver is about to turn or change lanes in the next few seconds. With that information, combined with data from sensors outside the car, computers can predict that a driver is going to make a dangerous move. Computers learned to correlate certain head and body movements with impending driving maneuvers. When tested later with a different set of drivers, the technology correctly predicted driving maneuvers 77.4% of the time. On average, a turn or lane change was anticipated more than 3.5 seconds before it happened. Obviously the technology is still in the early stages but it has some major potential in decreasing accidents.

Less Screen Time

We are becoming increasingly addicted to our phone services and other communication services. So much so that it is intruding on our lives and connections with other people. March 7th was the National Day of Unplugging. A time when we can reconnect with the world around us and take a break from the mobile applications and candy crushing. One of the things that you can do is turn off notifications. Does checking a single notification turn into a half-hour of phone browsing? There are various mobile applications, such as QualityTime for Android and Moment for iOS, that monitor your phone usage and inform you just how many hours a day you're spending looking at a screen. Try to set up phone-free periods during the day. Schedule them when you're busy doing something else, in order to make the break a bit easier. I mean do you really need your phone at the dinner table, in the bathroom or while you are watching a movie. Just something to think about.

Virtual Reality: Coming Soon

That is, if you are one of the lucky people that do not get nauseous when using one of the headsets. The public’s wait for virtual reality is nearing an end. In recent days, several of the most prominent companies making headsets offered rough timetables for consumer versions of their products, ending the guessing game about when virtual reality would get its first real test. Software development professionals are also getting very anxious about it coming out because it can open up a whole new area of development and creating content. The most closely watched of those companies, Oculus VR, which is owned by Facebook, said it expected to begin widely selling a product before the end of the year. Oculus has teamed up with Samsung on the product, a headset that uses a mobile phone as a screen. Either way, I am really excited about the virtual reality sets coming out and what they will entail. What are your thoughts?

Increasing Human Intelligence

To conduct the study, published in the March-April 2015 issue of the journal Intelligence, the researchers looked at 64 years of IQ score data for more than 200,000 people living in 48 countries. Overall, they found that global IQ scores have risen by an average of 20 points since 1950. Of course, this data does not show the whole picture. First of all, it is important to note that the IQ tests cannot be standardized because of the differences in cultural backgrounds. Things might be misunderstood and therefore considered wrong because the translation might be inaccurate. Some researchers connect it to the fact that the developing countries are providing better health and education and that is improving living standards. It is thought that the higher IQ is due to the increased living standards. There has been evidence to support the effect but no clear underlying cause. One of the way to approach it differently is to use cloud services and big data. The data then could be analyzed for trends that might not have been apparent before. So are we getting smarter? The answer lies somewhere in the grey area where all the important answers are.