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The Shape of the Future
Last week, Sci-Fi writer Charlie Stross was invited to speak at a technology open day at engineering consultancy TNG Technology Consulting in Munich. He's posted a transcript of his discussion on his website, which features a fascinating analysis of where technology is going in the next 10-25 years. Instead of envisioning outlandish future developments, he looks at what the impact might be on society from very reasonable iterations of today's SOTA. "10Tb is an interesting number. That's a megabit for every second in a year -- there are roughly 10 million seconds per year. That's enough to store a live DivX video stream -- compressed a lot relative to a DVD, but the same overall resolution -- of everything I look at for a year, including time I spend sleeping, or in the bathroom. Realistically, with multiplexing, it puts three or four video channels and a sound channel and other telemetry -- a heart monitor, say, a running GPS/Galileo location signal, everything I type and every mouse event I send -- onto that chip, while I'm awake ... Add optical character recognition on the fly for any text you look at, speech-to-text for anything you say, and it's all indexed and searchable. 'What was the title of the book I looked at and wanted to remember last Thursday at 3pm?' Think of it as google for real life. "
"You're talking about memories."
Yes, I am the one with the legendary sig.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
With the proper ironclad legal protections, Life Recorders will be a massive boon. Accused of a crime? No problem, just open up the datafile, fastforward to the time of the event, and see that we were actually sitting in the basement surfing alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.midgets.
And for those times when we want to actually bring a midget home, we might want to stop recording. After all, the purpose of privacy is to protect ourselves from the erratic rationality of our fellow humans' moral judgment (as well as the wholesale absence of rationality behind some of our laws). We've still got evolutionary wiring left over that causes us to feel physical pain when others disapprove, and so privacy is a rational demand.
But of course turning off our Life Recorder will be considered a forfeiture of our right to be Presumed Innocent.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
If we all get to used to a machine recalling stuff for us, we'll soon get too lazy to do it ourselves. I've already found my handwriting sucks because I type 99% of the time and my memory for certain things is worse because I never really have to use it - stuff I want to know is either on my hard drive or a Google searech away.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I don't think they will let you in with a camera mounted on your head.
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
There's some bits of it though, that would be nice to keep. And here's the thing, you don't know beforehand which bits that is. Sometimes you discover it later, on occasion *MUCH* later.
That girl sitting next to you on the bus today ? It don't matter, unless she ends up eventually becoming your wife, in which case you migth very well find it amusing to have a recorded video of your very first meeting. (or not, but -some- people would, which is the entire point)
The only way of being able to get at the interesting bits though, is recording a lot of stuff, on the hunch that *some* of it will be interesting and/or useful. For the same reason, basically, that many people keep *all* receipts for expensive stuff they buy -- because inevitably -some- of the stuff will break down, and then you may need the receipt in order to get a guarantee-repair or a refund.
But using a life recorder IS a crime already according to the MPAA/RIAA. At the movie theater, listening to the radio, watching a baseball game, reading a book, at a live concert (except for the Grateful Dead), etc. etc.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.