Nick O'Sheil blog for MYCookstown.com

IS TECHNOLOGY CHANGING YOUR LIFE?

Each week Nick O' Shiel, Chief Executive, Omagh Enterprise Company, blogs on issues related to enterprise, technology and the economy. This week MYCookstown.com asks Nick if technology is changing your life.

Technology follows us everywhere we go and tracks everything we do. User-friendly devices like the smartphone and less friendly ones like electronic tags record us during the day and watch over us at night. Many devices are designed to be harmless but the data they collect is not, as it captures the detail of our life.

The use of smartphones by so many people, so often, for so many things coupled with the growth of wearable technology means we are living an always-on connected life; whether we like it, or realise it, or not.

In private, the computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone and smartwatch are just some of the devices that track our every movement; in public, cameras, CCTV, GPS and a myriad of other systems play a similar, albeit more sinister and intrusive, role.

In many buildings and public spaces sensors now form part of the design and track, record, measure, influence and even dictate our habits, behaviours and patterns of thinking and consumption.

The affordability and shrinking of technology plays a key role in the growth of tracking devices and such growth will continue, as they poke and prod and penetrate and parse every part of our life.

The amount of information collected is colossal and increases at an exponential rate, as devices not only track us but also talk to each other and swap details about us.

The next step will see our data packaged, sold and resold with and without permission; triggering a step change in how our information is used and, at times, misused and abused.

One outcome of the sale and trading of our data is evident in the world of gaming with its capacity to create virtual worlds and present them as real.

Technology driven games merge physical and virtual and allow us to experience both, as part of a new frontier that will combine data and artificial intelligence.

In the future, technology informed by our personal data will enable us to move between physical and virtual, as they merge to form new seamless boundaries.

Current technology, for instance, allows us to check information about hotels and holidays, whereas, future technology infused with personal data will allow us to see and feel and touch and experience what it is like to be there, without actually going there.

Just as we now spend time on the Internet, technology rich data will increase the time we spend in virtual worlds with resultant, good and bad, effect on our physical world.

SO, technology is taking another leap that will enable us to merge different worlds, as our data is mined to create personally tailored realities.