Latin America. Check this out! You're going to love it! "My friend yelled at me from behind the wheel of his new car as he sped over the second floor, that's when I began to doubt my sanity for joining his 'stunning demonstration'.
He stepped on the accelerator thoroughly, so much so that we returned back to our seats, at that very moment we approached the vehicle in front at an unsettling pace. Frozen by terror, I instinctively prepared for the impact. At that instant a red caution light began flashing on the dashboard and his car automatically slowed down to a safe distance.
"What an amazing thing, right?" He shouted at me excitedly. I could only feel the heart somewhere in my throat.
The collision avoidance feature in your car is just one example of all the amazing "smart" technologies that work in our favor to make our lives easier, healthier, safer and, yes, more fun.
Smart technology reaches almost every part of our existence. Our refrigerators sense when the milk is running out and can add a bottle to our shopping list.
Our "Jabra Sport Pulse" wireless headphones monitor the pulse using the heart rate and send the results to an app that, in turn, drives us to exercise in a smarter way. - WATCH VIDEO -
And who reads maps yet? We rely on Google Maps to get where we need to go.
We can't be experts in everything
Our adventure on the second floor made us wonder... why are we so willing to put our trust and often our lives in the hands of technology?
To begin with, because we believe that technology helps us make better decisions. Our lives are more complicated and going at a much faster pace than ever before, so much so that we can't be experts in all facets of it. But that ability now exists in the form of technology, so we choose to rely on it and in this way we go where it guides us.
It would be very difficult to imagine just a decade ago the mind-boggling range of technologies that today allow us to communicate, travel, learn, monitor our health and more.
Even if we could have imagined them, we probably wouldn't have accepted them. However, the technology has quickly become just as ubiquitous as perhaps safe.
For the same reason most of us do not think twice before following the advice of smart devices that monitor our biometric data, we are now willing to allow an App to monitor us to control our blood pressure. What's next? Virtual reality and cars that handle themselves, surely!, and we will adapt easily to them.
Sure, some people worry about how much of our lives revolve around technology. But as long as technology is created for humans by humans, I don't feel particularly fond of that thought. For me, technology isn't about doing more, it's about doing things better and smarter.
Finally, I can only thank my friend and his trick on the second floor of the peripheral, a situation that led me to this conclusion.
Written by Peter Hartmann, Senior Director of Product Management at Jabra.
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