BT's Predictions for the Future

Saluton_Mondo writes "BT describes the future as looking "ever more exciting each year"... you won't be surprised if you read their white paper on a timeline of technological development in various aspects of human culture, running up to about 2100. It's a bit out of date, but still pretty funny. Some are reasonable predictions, like the introduction of ID cards in the UK by 2010, or the rise of an American dictator in 2000. Others are just funny, like an orgasm via e-mail in 2010, or a security Barbie which searches for lost offspring. I'll not even mention the emergence of the Borg in 2040... see what you think."

Comments

obligatory

[mOoZik]

Looks like they didn't predict it would be a good idea to upgrade their servers.

hello?

[_UnderTow_]

"I'll not even mention the emergence of the Borg in 2040."

Isn't that what you just did?

google has it in html

[lydon]

In case of (already occured) slashdotting look here (try the 'View as HTML' link).

Unable to read or write?

[TheSpoom]

Whole generation unable to effectively read, write, think, and work ... 2050

Y do u h8 me?

Re:Googled

[CaptainBaz]

and HTMLified.

Highest earning celebrity

[inc01]

Highest earning celebrity is synthetic ... 2010

The way I see it, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Britney Spears are synthetic already.

And the subsequent..

[Channard]

.. crash of the Borg's OS after applying the latest MS patch, crippling the collective. The borg themselves are quickly 'rescued' by the Weyland-McDonalds corporation and put to worth behind fast food counters across the solar system. Meanwhile, the Borg Queen, deprived of her power base, becomes a cam-whore, running her own pay-per-view website.. slogan.. 'Come and watch me assimilate barely legal teens.'

Orgasm mails?

[marvin2k]

like an orgasm via e-mail in 2010

Right, and when the spammers get this the productivity of the internet-connected world will drop to zero.

Boss: Any important emails today?
Employee: (checks) AHH! MMH! OOHH! YESSS! ... nope, just spam.

Missed one...

[g_attrill]

2004: Slashdot posts 100,000th dupe

hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

AI chatbots indistinguishable from people by 95 % of population by 2005.....

Is that a statement on the development of AI or a statement about 95% of the population?

Re:hmmm

[vidarh]

I'm pretty sure it's a statement about 95% of the population. A few years ago I was discussing writing a dating chatterbot for irc with a guy I knew. We were both heavy irc'ers at the time, and used irc primarily to meet women (the shocking this is it worked very well) and we were struck by how easy and predictable it was - if what you were after were getting girls contact details what worked best was sticking to a few successful patterns, and just moving on if you didn't get anywhere (it's not as if I at the time was looking for a lasting relationship ;) )

So at some point I set up a few _really_ simple bots.

The first one only responded with the same line over and over again whenever it was msg'd. At least on person kept on messaging it regularly over a period of half an hour, getting more and more upset that it kept on saying the same thing, and after a while getting pissed off that it kept answering even when he asked it to shut up :)

The second one just cycled through 4-5 canned responses and started over. People kept talking to it, and pointing out that it had said the same things before, and started giving details about themselves.

The third one looked for a trigger word in the message it got, and chose a sequence of messages based on that, and then cycled through the sequence. If no trigger word was present, it would choose a random sequence. If a trigger word for a different sequence occured while cycling through a sequence, it would switch sequences.

All in all it had a grand total of 20-25 messages.

The record conversation (based on a run of a couple of days) was one and a half hours... At that point I became disillusioned and dropped the whole thing. I still think that a few weeks of work and I'd easily have a chatterbot capable of picking up real women and getting their phone numbers in droves...

Now, imagine how long people will speak to Eliza or a chatterbot that someone actually make an effort on.

The reason bots fail the Turing test is because the judges know there's a chance they are talking to a machine. In chat rooms, most users are clueless that a bot could be capable of actually engaging them in something that seems like a conversation, and most people make so many mistakes, evade questions, give weird answers, have problems with the language etc., that people are VERY forgiving of the answers they get.

From watching one of the girls I met on IRC years ago chatting, I first realized why that is so: The typical "normal" user often follow conversations very superficially. They switch a lot between different conversations, but often seem not to put any effort in keeping track of the overall flow of a specific conversation. So if your bot get into trouble, it can get itself right out of trouble by simply ignoring "difficult" messages and answering something completely unrelated and randomly changing subjects and a large part of the people it talks to won't react at all, because they do the same thing themselves all the time.

Or more curiously

[Channard]

Question: Why is it that many people in the UK are get so upset about the idea of national ID cards, when nobody seems to mind (or notice) other even more "big brother" things that go on in the UK, such as the national grid of video cameras on every street corner and road?

Or more curiously, why did none of the national press seize upon the fact that the London Council's webcams were mysteriously out of action wherever a war protest was taking place, either when the president visted recently or when the whole Iraq war thing started? And no, I'm not wearing a foil hat - check out http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34062.html or http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/29883 .html

Re:power? food?

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

"Or how we're going to feed the billions and billions of people on this planet?"

That question is based on out of date predictions of the population - in most countries the birth rate has declined significantly since the overcrowded earth scenarios became popular. The US is just about replacing its population, in Europe the native populations are decining (the worst case being Italy, where the birth rate has dropped well below replacement levels). Africa and the Middle East have expanding populations, but even there the rate has generally slowed. The last predictions I saw estimated that world population would peak around the middle of the century and then decline.

Re:The submission IS flamebait. so are you.

[vidarh]

No, they are only holding members of terrorist groups.

*cough* Innocent until proven guilty *cough... *cough* fair trial *cough* *cough*...

They could have been holding people responsible for genocide and the treatment would still not be justified.

While Bush may not make use of it, through the laws passed after 9/11 combined with the legal precendent that Guantanamo Bay is not subject to US law, he has effectively created a situation where government agencies can seize anyone they want, prevent them access to lawyers, and move them to a location where they have no rights and no legal protection whatsoever.

Bush might not make full use of them, but having established the situation, a future president, or even lower level government officials can, giving a very strong incentive for people with aspirations to power for seeking out the "right" positions.

If not fascist by itself, it's certainly a gift package to anyone who wish to further limit peoples freedom.

Re:(Hello?)^2

[McWilde]

No, actually it's called paralepsis.