Don't worry, Apple is the sober driver tonight.

A few days ago, some scientists in Germany unveiled a car, called MadeInGermany (MIG). It's like any other car, except for the sensory camera on the roof. Oh, and the fact that it can drive itself.

At the call of a smart phone, these cars can use GPS to find their owners or potential taxi fares, drive to them, and navigate their own way to the person's home.

These cars apparently have the potential to reduce traffic in Berlin to one-fifth of what it is now, because the cars will be able to plan their journeys to pick up several users headed in the same direction.

Back in the day cars that could drive themselves were cool and mischevious like Brum, or murderous and terrifying like Christine but now it seems to be a reality, who knows what to think. Its great in a way, because the main cause of car crashes is human error, but also very worrying because it puts corporations like Apple and Google in direct control of a pretty significant part of daily life.

I wonder if, like the taxi drivers in Bali who take their fares to stores owned by their family, these cars will casually drive you home via Apple outlets, or stop at a store and refuse to drive until you buy it a personalised Apple license plate.

Ok, probably not.

But if these cars are hooked up to our smart phones, the technology to alert them to favourite eateries, stores and facebook friends as it drives you past is definitely there. New media and technology interacting in ways like this definitely has potential, and the ability to take control from some humans while driving (I'm looking at you, grandad) may turn out to be very good for road safety.

Also, the techno nerd within is kind of excited to one day be able to issue my car instructions like KIT on Knight Rider. Come on, how cool would that be?

One laptop, a lot of hope.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) scheme is perhaps one of the most promising ones that I’ve come across in a very long time. The newly developed scheme allows children in poverty stricken, third world nations access to a laptop, and undoubtedly a whole new world.

The digital divide can no longer be ignored. It is a troubling and far-reaching problem that continues to divide the world into those who have access to the internet and those who don’t. The biggest problem that the digital divide brings with it, is that it leads to what is commonly known as the knowledge divide. The knowledge divide essentially means that citizens of third world nations (amounting to over 50% of the worlds citizens) don’t have access to a significant amount information and are thus at a high disadvantage. This lack of knowledge is what holds back nations from developing.

Nicholas Negroponte knows this all too well.

While some might argue that children in third world nations need food and water and efforts should be channelled into providing them with conventional notions of “bare essentials”, I am of the view that technology is very much a basic necessity. While that’s not to say that food, water and clothing aren’t absolutely vital for their survival and growth, so is technology. The two are not mutual exclusive.

Technology empowers. This places it in a position of power and absolute importance. Unless these children are able to empower and educate themselves and see the world outside of their four walls, they will forever be fighting to rise above their poverty.

The laptops allow children a chance to understand the world as truly global citizens; to empower themselves through knowledge and in turn transform the world - even when the real world around them sometimes looks seemingly bleak.

These children are tomorrow's hope for these nations. The laptops and the access to the internet that comes with it will allow these children a chance opportunity to rewrite and reshape destiny – both for themselves and their countries.

Zombification by technology

Technology turns people in to zombies. All uni students love sleep, but how many of us actually get enough? what with our busy social lives, jobs and studies people struggle to get enough shuteye nowadays. Insomnia is an ever increasing problem amongst the youth of today, how many times have you lain in bed late at night, restless, struggling to sleep and then find youself on your laptop? It is important for us as youths to get as much sleep as possible because when we enter the workforce for real sleep will be at a premium anyways and our obsession with social networking sites is setting us up with bad habits! Since we are the what they call "digital natives" the issue of sleep deprivation is more important for us than generations before since our relationship with technology is more commited than any other relationships. So here are some helpful tips to get you to sleep instead of getting on facebook:

1. Exercise! exercise is good way to burn off all the unused energy stored in your body, you dont need to do much go for a walk or something at the very least the fresh air will actually be good for you. You never sleep as well as when you are tired.

2. Read (a book). This is also a good way to stimulate your mind and get that sucker to do some work. Nothing beats the aestheic of reading from a book, stories are constructed specifically to entertain and inform the reader. So forget Mary's latest status and read a book. Worst comes to worst the book will be so boring you'll fall asleep anyways. Its a win/win situation!

3. Turn off your laptop when youre done with it. Laptops can go days on end without actually being turned off. Im pretty sure for some of you the last time yours was actually off was when you forgot to charge it. Leaving you laptop on at all times encourges people to believe they have unfinished business with their laptops which is disturbing all on its own.

4. If your insomnia means you are getting 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night then you need to distance yourself from your personal techs. Keep your cellphone, iPod and laptop out of your room when you go to bed,this will be a little harder to achieve at first this might seem a little extreme but it is a useful habit to have.

As much as we'd like to believe technology and humans have not (yet) evolved to be the perfect cyborg being. If you can seperate yourself from technology during the evening, your social life will not suffer. Dont turn in to a zombie, distance yourself from technology it will be there when you wake up!

Some may say that in this day and age we are dependent on technology to the point where we are considered cyborgs. I, however, disagree, they are merely implements used on a day to day basis. Technology has always influenced human life and culture throughout history and the changes caused by technology can appear quite startling, especially to older generations. New technology is always under scrutiny. For example, in the mid 1900s televisions were turning the population into zombies on a scale unheard of before, and now the next generation of threats to human existence are the Internet, mobile phones/devices and video games. While the illusion exists that humans have reached the point where we cannot live without technology such as cellphones and iPods, if they were actually taken away from you I am pretty sure it would not result in death. The devices are less important to us now, than a farmers tools were, and a navigators compass were several hundred years ago. However I am still worried that the Terminator is going to come and get me one day.

I think, therefore I status-update.

After two years of being a member of the Facebook 'community' (I'm going to be a total Arts Student here and say, read: Facebook 'miniplenty'. Okay. Arts moment over.) I am disappointed to say that it took the last lecture to make me realise that I am a cyborg.

Because of course I'm a cyborg! Things make perfect sense now that I have a term that describes the uneasy feeling I get when I'm in a forest and my cell phone is out of range, and when I reach my grandmother's house there's no wi-fi signal either.

The ability to communicate is a primal one, inherent to the nature of being social creatures. Language deprivation experiments documented in the 13th Century report the Roman Emperor Frederick II tried to test what language children would speak if they were not communicated with at all from birth. He had hoped that it would be the language God had given Adam and Eve, however, the babies all died as infants. Communication, therefore, is an essential element of physical and cognitive development. It would make sense that we who amplify our ability to communicate with new technologies are developing beyond the last generation of humans. And that's practically evolutionary.

So it doesn't scare me, the thought of being a cyborg. I'm not Darth Vader (yet), and I like that I can write this thoughtful observation on my iPhone while listening to music as I walk to my grandmother's house.

Also, I can let my followers on Twitter know that there is some creep trailing me who looks hairy enough to be a wolf...