Channel 4 News Data Baby/Big Dog Robot.

I think that technology is moving into a new era. My paper looks at the future of the Internet, as mobile technology revolutionises machine to machine communications, health care and the development of democracy, albeit in its very early stages. Robot technology for example is beginning to take shape. Our relationships with data, for good or bad, is causing social and economic change at a staggering rate. On the one hand it has created Internet giants, like Google, who grow increasingly controlling and manipulative of peoples online lives, while at the same time providing stunning technology and access to information, which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Channel 4, has recently launched what it called a Data Baby, to monitor the power and influence of Internet companies, who are dominating and using our data, to sell us things, spy on us and direct us to websites of companies that have paid Google to favour them in searches:

Meet Rebecca Taylor:




Robot technology is also beginning to show signs that we are breaking through into autonomous robotics, not unlike the kind of machines we have seen in sci-fi, for many years. We've had robot technology for a long time, particularly in manufacturing, and more recently in medicine. The use of drones in war has also become as sophisticated as it is controversial. This film from military equipment company Boston Dynamics, shows a quite scary, advanced version of a robot that has been in development for some time. What you'll see is the power of such machinery, in its very early stages, trying to deal with gravity, as it picks up a heavy item and chucks it across a warehouse. What you'll also notice, is that the weight of itself, the block and the fact that it has picked it up and thrown it, has meant that the robot, has had to constantly adjust its feet, to stay upright and balanced.