Post 10

“Rather than bring the virtual product into a real environment for testing, manufactures simulate the environment along with the product” (Wolf 426).

The virtual product in this instance is a vehicle. I speculate this virtual testing is taking place in many products, not just cars. In fact, it’s easy to flirt with the idea that all current products being designed and produced in today’s world are most likely simulated virtually first and then produced in a tangible form second. Something about that doesn’t sound right.

It’s depressing, but the act of failing is a deeply seeded human trait; one could say: to fail, is to be human. One-hundred years ago, a person trying to create something would take a shot in the dark, fail, and then try again, fail, and try again… until they succeeded. That’s human. That’s natural.

What isn’t natural, is plugging numbers into a computer and letting it tell you how to build something after running it’s virtual simulations. What’s the next step? Maybe in 50 years computers will be able to tell us what we should build based off what they think we need. And then maybe in another 50 years, computers will be able to tell us how we should live our lives based around the products they design and create for us. Sound familiar? I hate to reference Sci-Fi’s but the first two movies that pop into my mind are The Matrix and The Terminator. Machines, namely A.I., take over and destroy the world, as we know it.  

Maybe that’s a little far-fetched, but think about it. In a very short amount of time we are already at the point where iPhones dominate most peoples average day. Technology is sticking its ugly head in nearly every aspect of human life. Where do we as humans and technology go from here? I can’t see us becoming less attached to technology anytime soon; if anything, technology is becoming more human everyday and the bond only grows stronger.