New Fashion Trend with Technology?

One of the biggest problems we see today is distracted driving, usually caused by someone using their phone on their commute. This causes many accidents and unfortunately leads to sometimes death, however there has been a new idea on how to stop this. Google and clothing company Levi Strauss & Co. have come together and created a new type of clothing that pairs your phone with what they call, a “smart” jacket. For example, if one were to get a call, your jacket would then vibrate notifying you what is going on. In the cuff part of the jacket is a small sensor that you can touch and control as if it were your phone. Now I am not saying people should do this while still driving, but it does allow commuters, whether you’re walking, running, biking or driving, to keep your eyes on where you are going and it limits yourself to going to look down at your phone. The jacket can also provide navigation, connect to your music, and read notifications in addition to calls. The whole idea behind this is to connect people’s fashion to technology, something we really haven’t seen before. Many designers are now creating new trends that are beginning to reshape this industry. In a sense I believe it is a cool, fun idea but what I wonder is if this new trend will stick around or will people not buy into. If you want to see a video describing all of this as well as the article, click on the link.

 

 

Autonomous Cars Moral Dilemma

Today, advanced technology is seen all around us and will be increasing everyday in the future. One of the more popular advancements we have seen in the world are autonomous cars that will drive by themselves without you having to. These cars are programmed to understand its surrounding environment and navigates through laser lights, GPS, radar sensors, and different control systems and sensory information. Advantages of these cars are seen as clean energy for the environment as these cars would be electric, reduced costs, increased safety, and fewer car accidents.However, a more philosophical question has risen out of this: weather your self driverless car, in the case of life or death, should protect you if it means killing a pedestrian or protect the pedestrian by crashing and potentially killing you. Now this creates an uncertainty on the way these cars are programmed and even to be bought in the future. An article from The Guardian, science editor Ian Sample, explains a very interesting survey on which car would you want to drive in: the one that saves you or the one that kills you to save someone else. Sample states, “In one survey, 76% of people agreed that a driverless car should sacrifice its passenger rather than plough into and kill 10 pedestrians. They agreed, too, that it was moral for AVs to be programmed in this way: it minimised deaths the cars caused. And the view held even when people were asked to imagine themselves or a family member travelling in the car.” Now morally this makes sense, that you want to save as many people as you can. But later in the article, when these people are asked if they want to buy the car that is programmed to kill the driver if it comes to that decision, statistics say they won’t buy it. Instead they would rather not have that car at all. Now fully autonomous cars aren’t fully out there yet, but the future holds many opportunities for new technology to make a difference. But, this is the world’s first time seeing this type of stuff, so it’ll be interesting what types of laws and regulations new technology like autonomous cars must have programmed in them. Soon we’ll be finding out.