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The Future of the P.C.
scarcrowman writes "This is an interesting article on the projected future of what we call the 'P.C.' It is becoming more 'Personal' than ever."
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Almost like the Truman Show. But when he says "every conversation," does he mean in audio or in text?
I guess this will be good for biographies. But who would want their life recorded?
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
With ideal compression, they are technically the same. Add some metadata that explains tone of voice, pacing, rhythum, cadence... 100 megs worth of samples of your voice. Why record the actual waveforms when they could be synthesized with a decent level of fidelity to the original?
I guess the only limiting factor at all, would be whether cpu performance increases more than storage in the coming years.
My fear is that people will start doing this and then it will be possible to subpoena the information.
My *hope* would be that the courts would understand that to record your life in this much detail is essentially an extension of memory, and that there should be some criterion for a device which is included under the laws which prevent you from testifying against yourself.
You might be quite innocent, but if you are suspected of having committed a crime in a two month period with probable cause, the conequences of having someone have every second of that period might be socially disastrous.
I highly doubt the courts will understand.
Its a futurist article, really. The whole "life TV" nonsense. Every technological advance has had its futurists and almost without exception they've been painfully wrong.
The author suggests that computers will be more intrusive, when people seem to want less intrusiveness in their lives. Instead of bigger, uglier boxes with tons of storage you'll probably see smaller quieter devices that don't take up so much desktop real-estate. Instead of an mp3 player here, a phone there, a laptop there, etc we're seeing the emergence of the easy to use PDA smartphone. Instead of people blowing their savings on a $2,000 gaming machine, we're seeing a boom in the console gaming industry. Instead of people demanding bigger brighter and higher resolution screens we're seeing a shift to thinner LCD screens for the sake of aesthetics.
The PC has its place, but I doubt as this "life recorder." Remind me, what percentage of blogs get abandoned after their first week? 90%? more?
- We have mapped out the brain and know how we can hook it up without making the victim, I mean subject, I mean Guinie Pig a vegtable.
- We can create this out of material that we know for certain will not have ill side efects. Such as the dye in the PCB on the processor.
- People (besides yourself) actually want their brains hooked into the internet. With what script kiddies do now, I know I sure as hell wouldn't be jacking in.
- You mention "who know, maybe even a TB of chemical memory". I dunno about anyone else but this sounds like you want to re-structure my biological signature and alter my electrical signals for technological advances. Sorry, but I like my brain functioning just fine.
- Lastly, you assume that "jacking in" to the brain stem with an ethernet port would work. There are upteen Million nerve endings connecting to my built in CPU (the biological one, not silicon) that I don't want f#*@ed up.
"But doesn't that make you wonder just how close we really are to a Matrix-like life?"-We're a long way off buddy. You show me an acurate map of the human brain, and CNS before you try to promote the creation of the borg.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
My little lap top is my media box, it has svideo out, into the tv, I play DVDs and AVI (self encoded home movies) from it. It has every CD I own on it, all encoded at a decent rate AAC, and for this I have a good speaker system. I also use it for a dock for my camera and for my iPod, and it thus has all my pictures on it. All of the files are stored on a USB external HD, except the music. I use it as a mobile document store/word processor. I've outgrown gaming (besides solitare, and some emulation), so I really don't care about that. And when I still had my PDA I used it for downloading eBooks and such, but I nev er quite got into that.
This is the way I see computing going, with the PC being the terminal that we use to interact, and coordinate with our other gizmos. Much like you said. But, the important part you miss is the control it grants, basically everything is slaved to it, and it is generally the interface I use to control my other forms of hardware. I like this, though it should be simpler.
I might be thinking different if I still used my big box, which is now a wireless file server/back up box. It was a big monolithic box that sounds like a reactor running. Even the silly colorful case fans and lighting didn't even help. My little lap top is inobtrusive, which I think is beginning to matter more, it blends in with my decor, is silent, and "just works".
I think people are getting sick of power, which seems to come with obtrusivness. I don't want a computer sitting in my living room, screaming "look at me! I compute stuff!", people want something that acts like an infomation appliance, and not a chibi Cray.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey