I had studied civil engineering so I am a sort of engineer and afterwards I studied Interactive Digital Media followed by a Master in the same field.
During my many years of study I always wondered why we learn only things that solve luxury problems for the first world. Ok, maybe with civil engineering is not the case since you can build houses for the poor and infrastructure, even if in real life they build them by themselves since they can't afford to pay a company, so in the end even with engineering you still solve only rich people problems.
With Media studies is a different world. Since I made my studies at a university of applied sciences the whole study was focused on practice, each subject we studied had also a project attached. This is very well, nothing to complain, nothing is better than hands-on practical stuff. Now comes the part that makes me worry for all those years all the projects I have seen (from my semester, higher semesters and lower semesters) were only useless "first world rich hipster problem solvers".
Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to see save Bigfoot projects, or rain forest or other extreme social stuff. It is not my kind to believe that helping poor african kids by giving them a fish will solve their problem as long as you don't teach them to fish and as long as you interfere with their politics just to keep the money rolling into your NGO.
The thing that scares me is that my colleagues are the ones that will be at one point decision makers, trend setters and will flood the market with this kind of things. All the project I have seen or concepts are futuristic but in a wrong way, in the way that will break your contact with real world and immerse you in the digital world by purchasing gadgets, apps and useless luxury products just for fun or to be cool. I mean ... ambient intelligence for pubs and hotels, augmented reality sport apps, smart fridge, smart kitchen, intelligent car, smart dirty clothes bin, free parking places app, indoor navigation and the list can continue ... but can't we really live without them? Do I need a navigation device for shopping mall? Do I need my fridge to send me email that I need to buy milk? I can see with my own eyes! They are nice to have for fun gadgets but are not necessary, are luxury products that will help out world to become dumb and dependent on electronics.
I contributed at this thing too, was not my thing but you go with the flow, you don't want to be the biggest freak in the class. But all stopped at ambient intelligence where we wanted to combine nature with electronics and we used "real" water and was a big disappointment for everyone that our team didn't made it with digital water, it would have been cool. For my bachelor degree I was the only one to do something useless - a documentary for bikers with bikers. The other were only with augmented reality, intelligent play rooms, virtual reality games, smart elevator full with targeted advertising. This is what is expected to do, to serve the trendsetters, to dream Google glass integration, to dream virtual reality, all for the sake of money.
Why is wrong? You know you learn a lot of things from micro controllers to smartphone apps and you choose to create only things for rich people. Ok, you can't stop poverty or hunger but at least you can try to make more useful things than an app to help revolutions and riots, or a device to help you relax after one day of work that requires a separate room or at least half of it (you can relax at a lake with a book in hands).
A device maybe is never a solution for a poor man but can be for a person in need, for old people, for sick people, for blind people or for deaf people. I don't need a device to tell me how is the weather outside when I get out of bed since I have eyes to look outside and I can see if is sunny or is raining, a blind man for sure will need to know how is outside since the eyes are not helping. But which is the percentage of blind people? How many of them you can target? Maybe 5% of them? As business this is not wise, because if you can target 5% of the world you are rich, if you target 5% of the blind people you need a job.
The studies are preparing you to enter in the business world, to help big companies to go forward and earn more money ... so how can you do this if you are not learned from school to make things only for the rich, useless luxury products. Why they don't teach you about Tesla and to make you curious how to get free energy, or simple basic chemistry to make your own soap and own perfume and detergent? Because you need to produce money. And now if you say "oh, good that I studied social sciences and I help people" let me tell you that you are like me, you help people to remain in the system so you can have a job tomorrow. Social or not social studies are all making the same thing creating jobs and maintaining them by keeping other people dependent to the system and serving the rich by using the poor, and it has to stay like this, you need rich people to make the poor work more dreaming that they will get one day rich, and you need poor to have a working horse eager to spend money on useless stuff in their way of dreaming to be rich.
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