Upgrade Me Page #6

So I'm going to go and check.

'Back in the blur of central London, Pembrokeshire feels like a distant era. My phone's back on.

'So I'm happy, right?'

Hi Catherine, hi. Where are you?

Yeah, I will, I'm in the station now. I'll see you in five minutes. OK, bye.

'To find out if gadgets really do make us happy, I've come to St Pancras Station

'to meet a consumer psychologist.'

We know that upgrade culture has been accelerating through the years.

What effect would you say that was having on us as people?

I would say it has a detrimental effect.

We're not aware of how it actually impacts on us

because we are on a hedonic treadmill of consumption

if you like, whereby we tend

to purchase more and more and more products, especially gadgets.

And unfortunately people have a subconscious belief

that it will make them happier and it doesn't.

Because we believe it's going to make us happier we keep purchasing the next product

in the hope that it's going to fulfil some psychological need.

But what about the specifications and the functionality?

You know, for example, on my phone now I can get email

and I couldn't do that before and that makes me, I think, happy. Am I just deluded?

It might be practical. No, I wouldn't say you're deluded,

but most of the time people don't make use

of all the kind of functions that a gadget actually has.

Salman Rushdie once said this thing that we've all got a God-shaped hole inside of us,

but I actually wonder whether this hole inside of us is actually the shape of a laptop or an iPod,

and that we won't be happy until we can stuff all this technology in

and become gods and machines at the same time.

Um, I wouldn't quite put it that way,

but I think what people are trying to seek for in life in general is some sort of happiness

and I think if they believe that these products are the route to happiness then, yes,

they might have to decide to be more fully-integrated with them somehow,

but if you don't have that belief you're probably going to back off

and see the whole thing as a rather nasty idea.

You don't see technology as being the road to paradise anyway, do you?

I don't see any consumption being the route to paradise.

'The road to paradise doesn't always follow the scenic route.

'This is Sweep Electronics Recycling Plant in Kent.'

Will every TV in the land end up somewhere like this?

Yeah, there is well-established legislation around TVs. They are classified as a hazardous waste.

If you wanted any evidence that people are upgrading all the time, this is it.

It's not long since I had a TV like this,

it's not like they are 1950s stuff.

Not at all. I recognise my model on occasions, I've actually got a glass telly still at home myself.

The scale of it is overpowering - it's just all these sort of disgorged innards just piling up.

It's not pretty, is it?

No, it's not but you can look at it the other way - it's here being recycled rather going to landfill.

It's scary to see it, but I'd much rather than not see it at all.

'This is a big operation.

'They recycle 3,000 televisions a day here.

'They are disassembled by hand and then the materials are re-used to make new TVs.

'Every day, they also process 40 tonnes of computers, devices and white goods.

'An elephants' graveyard of gadgets and gizmos.

'But what's recycled is only a fraction of what's dumped in landfill.'

It feels insane that even stuff like this that's, I mean, it's only a few years old

and it would have cost thousands of pounds, just chucked in a tip.

It feels like a kind of madness as if, you know, it can't possibly carry on like this.

Well, it's the end of the road for the Palm PDA.

I would be lying if I said that I was sorry to see it go.

And it's going to that place where all Palm PDAs go at the end of their life,

it's Palm PDA heaven it's going to - it's going in the crusher.

'I'm glad the PDA has gone to a sound environmental heaven.

'But will it stop me buying the next, new thing?

'Whether it is frustrating or useful, or simply a beautiful object

'to impress our friends with, we continue to embrace new technology ever closer.

'The economic imperative tends to drive innovation forward.

'The cutting edge of technology is constantly changing

'and the possibilities are extraordinary.'

We get very emotionally attached to our gadgets,

but is there a future where we get physically attached to them as well,

to the point where we might want to upgrade ourselves?

Is there a future where technology is not just at our fingertips but in our fingertips?

Maybe that's the next frontier.

'In the last decade, what was once science fiction has become science fact.

'Computer chips have been implanted in the cochlea to restore hearing to deaf children.

'Researchers are working on chips attached to the retina to restore sight loss.

'Here at Cambridge University's Institute of Biotechnology,

'they're developing sensors to be implanted inside the body to give doctors real-time information

'about proteins and molecules inside the bloodstream.'

Your first work in this field was with chips, wasn't it?

- That's correct.

- Are these the kind of chips

- that you were working on?

- These are the chips

that we developed a few years ago.

So this chip would be, what, implanted into the body?

This particular chip is exactly that.

We designed this to monitor glucose and to be implanted within the body,

and you can see it's a relatively small size chip

and it would be implanted either in a location like here or perhaps around the midriff.

The problem with this technology is it's actually quite expensive

and that's why we stopped it,

to see whether we could find cheaper alternatives to monitor glucose

and other metabolites in the body with a much simpler system.

'The scientists are developing two types of sensor -

'one using light, and one using sound.

'The light device is a hologram

'produced by lasers that fire onto specially developed polymers.

'The hologram changes colour in response to changes in the blood chemistry.

'With acoustics, a radio signal is sent to the tiny transparent sensor,

'which then sends back the blood information.'

That just looks to me like a contact lens or something.

Yeah, it is actually a quartz disc made out of silica.

And that goes under someone's skin?

- Correct.

- And transmits information about what?

One of the major applications of this is to monitor glucose in blood of diabetics in real time.

If we can do that and control the blood glucose far more precisely

than you would if you were saying pricking your finger say five or so times a day,

then I think what you'd have is the ability to control the diabetes far better,

and you would not suffer a lot of the consequences of diabetes,

like blindness, for example, and also problems with the kidney.

'For now, this sensor technology remains experimental.

'In the future, the hope is it will improve diagnosis and treatment

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