I am back where Im supposed to be, and my tracker is in power save mode. <\/p>\n
That is the opening line of an email I receive multiple times a day from Saggio, my 3-year-old German Shepherd. No, he has not yet learned to type or use the Internet. (Hes not that smart.) Instead, his comforting correspondences come courtesy of Tagg, a small, Apple-white gizmo that attaches to his collar. I doubt he even knows its there. And he certainly has no clue that its getting in touch with people on his behalf. But there it is my dog now sends emails. <\/p>\n
Like FitBit, or any number of other fitness trackers available for humans, Tagg keeps tabs on various aspects of its users life specifically, how much exercise Saggio receives each day and where the hell hes wandered off to. But unlike human gadgets, Tagg provides more than just bits of data for obsessed pet owners like myself to pour over it gives him a way to communicate with me that has never before been possible. <\/p>\n
My dog has, in other words, become a cyborg. And Tagg and other similar products are only the beginning. <\/p>\n
Big furry business Over the past 30 years, Americans have become mad about their pets. More than 74 percent of U.S. households purposefully share their dwelling with another species, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. Thats up from 56 percent in 1988, by the American Pet Products Associations (APPA) count. Some 55.7 million households have at least one dog, and 45.3 million have a cat (or 10) sulking around. We have, in total, 218 million pets in the U.S. not counting fish. My house, for example, is currently occupied by two humans, one dog, three cats, and one ball python a relic from my bachelor days that keeps my ophidiophobic fiance from going anywhere near my home office. <\/p>\n
- Tagg CEO Scott Neuberger <\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Labor calculates that American pet owners spent $61.4 billion on our pets in 2011 more than what we spent on booze that year a number that some expect to rise by as much as $2 billion every year. Whats more, the money we spent on our pets was one of the few non-essential expenditures that remained consistent throughout the Great Recession, at about 1 percent of our total income. <\/p>\n
Tagg is but one of an increasing number of technology companies tapping into that revenue stream. Theres FitBark, and Whistle, both of which monitor a dogs activity similar to Tagg. There are RFID chip-activated doggy doors. Smartphone-activated pet food feeders and webcams. Pet treadmills. Robotic litter boxes. Remote-controlled gophers. Automatic laser toys. And collars that let your pets post tweets to Twitter. The bevy of pet technology may seem absurd but it should surprise no one considering 63 percent of us view our pets as full fledged members of the family not animals at all, but people. <\/p>\n
Theres this over-arching trend thats sort of dominated the whole industry for a bit of time now, this term humanization of the pet, says Tagg CEO Scott Neuberger. Theyre as close to human as they can get. In every way, were turning them into humans. <\/p>\n
In a recent op-ed for The New York Times, Gregory Berns, author of How Dogs Love Us and a neuroeconomics professor at Emory University, asserts that the theory that dogs are humanlike may have a scientific foundation. Using MRI scanners, researchers discovered for the first time that dogs brains function surprisingly similar to our own so similar, in fact, that Berns argues for granting dogs limited personhood a sentiment with which many dog owners already agree, Im sure. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Go here to see the original:<\/p>\n
Turn Fido into a K9 cyborg<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am back where Im supposed to be, and my tracker is in power save mode. That is the opening line of an email I receive multiple times a day from Saggio, my 3-year-old German Shepherd Continue reading