Vint Cerf Imagines the Net's Future At NASA

destinyland writes "Vint Cerf performed an hour-long Q&A at NASA for their 'Singularity University' (which is partially funded by Google ). A question about Twitter led Cerf to imagine even more useful micro-applications using the wireless internet and cell phones, including real-time health data and checking your location against a map of known biohazards and disease outbreaks. 'These systems have applications which I think we will discover over time,' Cerf says, adding 'For me, the exciting thing to just anticipate, are the new ideas for using these instruments.' Also speaking were Ray Kurzweil and nanotechnology expert Ray Merkle. (Read an interview with SU co-founder Peter Diamandis in the new issue of H+ magazine)."

Comments

Imagine

[MyLongNickName]

Imagine having advice hooked up that could monitor for a heart attack or a stroke. If detected, emergency could be called automatically. If reliable, what would this do for survival rates? In many cases, survival or simply the degree of damage is determined by how quickly treatment begins. I think something like this, if reliable and unobtrusive, would be a major leap forward for health treatment.

Re:Imagine

[CrimsonAvenger]

Basically, every advance has the potential to be used for evil purposes. It is up to us as a society to stand up against that. That has nothing to do with the technology itself.

Yep. Every technology can be used for evil purposes. And "society" has every right to stand up against that sort of thing.

The question becomes: is there any way that society CAN stand up against that sort of thing if we're all wearing our little monitoring devices?

I'm not specifically talking about the government doing the monitoring, but SOMEONE will monitor things, if only for "quality control purposes". Any problems with your ex- being one of the people who do the monitoring? Yes, your ex- is unlikely to be doing that but the people doing that are going to be SOMEONE's ex-. Is it okay if they can keep track of every orgasm you have? If they can monitor your vitals, they can tell when you're having sex, after all.

How about if they can check on WHO you're having sex with? It'll be someone in the same location, and unless you're really crappy at the whole sex thing, your partner's vitals will let anyone watching know that they're having a good time too...

Lots of things I could be doing that I don't want the government to know about. Even more that I don't especially want the neighbors to know about. Much less than neighbor's computer-literate teenagers....

And since this is all broadcast, just about anyone with sufficient savvy and equipment can monitor pretty much whatever they want - the internet doesn't keep too many secrets very well, after all. And cell phones even fewer....