Slashdot Mirror
How Google Is Becoming an Extension of Your Mind
An anonymous reader writes "An article at CNET discusses Google's ever-expanding role in search, and where it's heading over the next several years. The author argues it's becoming less of a discrete tool and more an integrated extension of our own minds. He rattles off a list of pie-in-the-sky functions Google could perform, which would have sounded ridiculous a decade ago. But in 2012.. not so much. Quoting: 'Think of Google diagnosing your daughter's illness early based on where she's been, how alert she is, and her skin's temperature, then driving your car to school to bring her home while you're at work. Or Google translating an incomprehensible emergency announcement while you're riding a train in foreign country. Or Google steering your investment portfolio away from a Ponzi scheme. Google, in essence, becomes a part of you. Imagine Google playing a customized audio commentary based on what you look at while on a tourist trip and then sharing photo highlights with your friends as you go. Or Google taking over your car when it concludes based on your steering response time and blink rate that you're no longer fit to drive. Or your Google glasses automatically beaming audio and video to the police when you say a phrase that indicates you're being mugged.'"
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/
Good article
In time, we will come to love Colossus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel)
E Proelio Veritas.
Augmented reality HUD glasses combined with a few other devices for analyzing the environment around you and then connected to any massive and fast database would yield some interesting things.
The least of which would be facial recognition and connections to people's public information - a nightmare for privacy/anonymity.
On the less evil side, analytical tools for first responders - air sniffer that scans for various substances and then can issue warnings tend alerts, echo-location type devices that will help map out a disaster site and pinpoint where human type noises are coming from. Real-time traffic re-routing to get people out of the way, etc. and so on.
The next 25 years are going to be fascinating in the evolution of gadgetry.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
When the digital clocks came, our children slowly lost the ability to read analog clocks. Then ubiquitous calculators eroded arithmetic skills. The with ever acclerating speed GPS killed our map reading abilities and PDAs and smartphones eroded our memory by taking over address lists and phone numbers. I could see eventually being connected to all the stored information of mankind all the time, and being able to store individual experiences cheaply will allow us to outsource most of our brain functions. But brain is not a factory where the released capacity will be put to some other use. Brain and muscle atrophy without usage. What we don't use, we lose, we don't redeploy.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Indeed, proof of this is the fact that ever since man stopped hunting dinosaurs, civilisation has been on a steep decline!
Except for people still need to use critical thinking, really the only truly useful brain function. The problem is schools don't teach it, schools focus on teaching just the "facts" which are pretty much worthless since even today any fact you might want to know is just a Google query away.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Nonsense. The brain has a huge degree of plasticity. If you have a stroke, fresh neural pathways will form and route around the damage. If you don't learn how to read an analog clock, the neurons will be used for something else instead. The idea that not being able to read a map is a form of brain damage is one of the most ludicrous things I've ever read on here.
It's analogous to developer frameworks (bear with me). Because developers can leverage stuff other devs have built, it frees them up to concentrate on higher order functions. THAT is what GPS, google search etc does for us. You should applaud it, it's what we've been doing the entire time we've been on this planet - building and building and building on layers of others knowledge and technology.
I use IXQuick for quite some time now. Google not only tried to be my brain, but my room mate, blind helper dog ("Did you mean ..."), stalker, mother and a lot more I never asked for.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I would love to live in a world where we are integrated with our devices like some futuristic sci-fi story. Where we remove our hands from the wheel and the car takes over, or it automatically taxis us home when we're drunk.
I just don't think I could put that amount of trust into any corporation. With the massive amount of password leaks lately and just the general track records of greedy corporations, they would need a HUGE incentive to get me on board.
For instance, if they were transparent with their security protocols, showed that they followed them, and held themselves to a much higher standard then just the bare minimum that most corporations seem to.
Even Google which has been a pretty great company has begun it's decline and is losing it's grasp of the "Don't Be Evil" slogan. I guess they are getting to big for their own good and probably won't change their path (eg. the removal of the option to remove their tracking data on your google account, the almost forced use of G+, and the discontinuation of Google Labs).
a quarter of a century before any sort of vehicle we have does not require a *licensed* driver to be on-board
Welcome to 2012, esteemed visitor. You will be pleased to know that the Cold War is over and that some of your predictions have come to pass:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17989553
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
So if somebody steals my Google Glasses, will they then proceed to run around town shouting that they're Manfred Macx, while I wander around in a functionally retarded state?
Or your Google glasses automatically beaming audio and video to the police when you say a phrase that indicates you're being mugged.
Or to the secret service when you are criticising the government. Or to the RIAA when you make an open invitation to come and watch a video at your house (an unlicensed public performance).
that the butler controls the master
the advisor controls the king
the henchman controls the boss
when power and control flip between superior and underling, the power inversion is based on who has the most information, and who can therefore use control of information as a means of control, period
and google has all the information
"How Your Mind Is Becoming an Extension of Google" is the real story
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How many times a day does the average man think about sex again?
pr0ntillion
When looking at women, wearing Google glasses?
Huh? What was that again?
It won't be long before a combination of AI and graphics will be able to assess the woman's body type and produce a "clothes free" enhanced reality image. .... Just don't look at Ann Widdecombe
Imagine a tool that cuts paper called scissors. You now have scissor hands. You are a monster! Imagine walking on stilts. You now have 6 foot peg legs. The horror! Imagine using a pen. You spew ink everywhere! You are a God Damned SQUID!!!
Cmon, is this a joke? Just because you have a tool, does not mean that said tool is a part of you. Let's just turn down the Kurt Vonnegut vision for a minute and cool off.
"Then ubiquitous calculators eroded arithmetic skills."
Really? Perhaps you're simply aware that most people don't do math very well and having calculators around has made this more visible. People who are math inclined often do the numbers faster than it takes to even reach for a calculator never mind punch in the digits. Most people were never like that. Astonished me when I found out.
Imagine that the government is curious about your activities of late. At the press of a button, Google transmits everything you've said, heard, everywhere you've gone, the people you've met and/or telephoned, the stores you've visited and what you've bought. . . the possibilities are endless. This should free everyone from worrying whether the police consider us criminals. They won't have to guess, they'll know.
In fact, we'll need fewer cops. With Google in proactive mode, it simply routes your car to the nearest fine or detention center whenever you commit a crime. The trial will be over before you arrive--Google transmits the data to the magistrate computer, which validates the offense and assigns the standard penalty. At that point only Google will be evil. Well, and maybe a few government people.
NR
Or your Google glasses automatically beaming audio and video to the police when it decides you are doing something suspicious.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
When was the last time you read a sundial or navigated by the position of the stars - both a mostly lost art.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I don't know about the car analogy, but generally you're right. A calculator is a math plug-in to augment our brain's inferior ability to do complex calculations quickly. A scheduling app on your computer that reminds you of appointments is like a memory extension. I'm a translator and I use terminology/translation memory software, which function in much the same way. ...Of course, at the rate Google Translate is going, it will soon be an extension of my unemployment.
Popular Science magazine came up with all these grand predictions about how were were going to use personal computers. At the time, PC's were clunky 8-bit CPUs with blinky lights in front and had to be programmed by flipping switches on the front panels.
Needless to say, Popular Science Magazine got nearly every prediction wrong. They never figured on videogames, BBS's, graphic design, video editing, youtube or facebook. About all they got right was word processing.
This idiocy regarding Google is about as correct. It also assumes Google is even going to be here in 20 years. Furthermore, something will come along to shake up the entire computing paradigm so that when we look back on 2012, we'll wonder why things were so primitive.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Yeah, I know with every new leap in technology someone comes out and claims that it going to make us dumber, but something like Google Glasses is one of those cases.
Do you need persistent feedback on everything you are looking at?
I certainly don't. I could do with less situational advertising in my life and I generally don't find it difficult to get around town without some constant reminder about where I am and an arrow to where I am going. I can read signs and understand the concept of street addresses pretty good. And I haven't reached that level of chronic social lethargy that makes pulling a phone out of my pocket a tedious chore or think it's uncool to hold a phone.
I definitely think there are niche markets for Google Glasses but for general public consumption I think these will be even more annoying then some smug hipster walking around with their "Bluetooth" lit up and dangling out of their ear talking louder then they need to about nothing at all.
Putting on a pair of Google Glasses is claiming to the world that you are too dumb and insecure to function in society without a trendy gadget of the month...where's my coffee
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I've always assumed that I will not have uploading available to me, but that rather as I get older and (probably, unfortunately) more and more mentally infirm more and more of what I need to get done to live will be taken over by expert systems that know how I like things and otherwise react like me...the onion will grow so, that the fact that the centre were hollow might not matter to the outside world, and by then I should be past caring.
There's a lot of doom-and-gloom being thrown around here... about how Google is going to destroy us, that we're becoming less intelligent, that we'll stop learning and thinking and Google, like some benevolent tyrant, will answer all our questions, and our thinking faculties will atrophy and wither away.
No.
Google is a tool, like a pencil is a tool. And from the very first human, we have been integrated with our tools. Are we the lesser for our use of pencils to store our information? Are we the lesser for using cars to convey us places our feet cannot? Ask any expert craftsman, driver, programmer - the tool becomes an extension of who we are and what we are.
I'd have no qualms with these scenarios if they only were ever used to aid the people. But the problem is that as has been pointed out, this is unlikely. It will be used as a vehicle to monetize people, and the government and various entities will want unrestricted access to it for the most trivial of "offenses" if they can even be stretched to fit the definition of the word. Big Brother and Big Business would love nothing more than to be able to get inside your head.
Kind of sad that some of the greatest ideas and inventions cannot come to fruition or likely won't see widespread use because of the ways they could be abused far outstrip the legitimate and helpful uses.
Navigating without electronic aids is still taught as a basic part of maritime training, in bushcraft and military training too.
I think the article is a bit heavy on the hyperbole, Google and the entire internet is a tool that can be used just like any tool. I've internalised it as much as I've internalised my keyboard or toaster.
Most USA'sian brains are destined to be fucked up by the illogical measuring system so don't blame it all on the digital clock ....
I used to think that when I was younger. But I've decided that it keeps our brains more active as we can't simply look at our fingers to convert measures like the rest of the world. It also has the additional benefit of making it easy to tell when someone is from another country or really stupid.
> When the digital clocks came, our children slowly lost the ability to read analog clocks.
Good riddance. The method was an artifact of an archaic technology. Our way of denoting time is also archaic and at some point in the future, might also be considered for revision, in order to harmonize it with other types of measurement.
> Then ubiquitous calculators eroded arithmetic skills.
Arithmetic is a means to an end, not an end in itself. During this time, our math curriculum has also become more advanced than it was from before when there were no calculators. As a society, we have a greater statistical sense than ever before (and need to further improve, a lot more). As a side note, look up "A Mathematician's Lament" by Paul Lockhart.
> The with ever acclerating speed GPS killed our map reading abilities
As maps and even address systems killed our need for honing our instinctive positioning skill.
> smartphones eroded our memory by taking over address lists and phone numbers.
As did Gutenberg press of oral traditions. Also, before smartphones (and speaking as a guy who is still suspicious of smartphones, as they stand), we used paper address books for that, not memorize them all. And before automobiles came along, our address lists were a lot smaller.
> I could see eventually being connected to all the stored information of mankind all the time, and being able to store individual experiences cheaply will allow us to outsource most of our brain functions.
Kind of already happened. Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Mechanical Turk. Unless you mean cybernetic cognitive integration with the cloud (shudder: not for atrophy fears though).
> But brain is not a factory where the released capacity will be put to some other use.
On what do you base that assertion on? The human brain is remarkably plastic. There is a lot of neuroscience research to back that up. The contrary is exactly what happens.
> Brain and muscle atrophy without usage. What we don't use, we lose, we don't redeploy.
So what parts of our brain have been documented to have atrophied so far? None, of course. Muscle is a different matter. I won't get into the reasons, but the mechanical revolution and the information revolution differ in certain respects.
We are cognitively consuming and processing more information than ever, not less. Whether this is mostly useful or simply information pollution is another matter. But we do think more of many different things now than we ever did. When the computers do our work, we take on more work... either to fully live, according to new expectations... or expect to be paid by showing value in tasks beyond the capability of computers. As computers progressively take on mundane and repetitive tasks, our tasks have become complex, not less.
You doubt you are one... but that is a Luddite argument.
I don't agree with that at all. My kids probably couldn't identify what local plants they can eat and which ones they should avoid (a skill that was arguably of tantamount importance to our ancestors) but then again, our ancestors that depended on those skills to live probably weren't spending much of their time doing Calculus and discussing world politics, either.
Ignoring the fact that everyone I know is fully capable of reading an analog clock, over 30 years after the first digital clocks were hitting the market, even young children, tell me, how would society fundamentally be harmed by this if there were no more analog clocks to read? If the skill was no longer relevant, why the hell are we keeping it around? Nostalgia? What a waste of energy and those precious brain cells.
I will admit that filling our brains with useless pop-culture trivia is a waste, and I'm not innocent in that regards (I've pretty much become a walking encyclopedia of Star Trek: The Next Generation which is absolutely useless to me outside of playing "name that episode" with friends) but I'm not going to go into hysterics over the fact that our kids have no knowledge of, say, what it's like to operate a rotary telephone, or fiddle with a pair of rabbit-ears trying to get a better TV signal, or how to properly behave on a party-line. It's useless knowledge to them.
I'm sure there are lots of things our own parents learned that we blew off, and they probably had the same worries about kids getting stupid, too. Now that we're parents, the cycle continues...just as it will when our kids start having kids of their own, freaking out about the fact that they're not teaching kids home-row typing skills (which are probably already on their way out, honestly) in an era where 95% of written communication is being done on touch-screen interfaces.
Augmented reality HUD glasses combined with a few other devices for analyzing the environment around you and then connected to any massive and fast database would yield some interesting things.
The least of which would be facial recognition and connections to people's public information - a nightmare for privacy/anonymity.
If Google does it, the system will only identify people who have opted in for facial recognition. This is exactly how it's been implemented on Google+, and it seems like the ideal balance between utility and privacy.
On the less evil side, analytical tools for first responders - air sniffer that scans for various substances and then can issue warnings tend alerts, echo-location type devices that will help map out a disaster site and pinpoint where human type noises are coming from. Real-time traffic re-routing to get people out of the way, etc. and so on.
The next 25 years are going to be fascinating in the evolution of gadgetry.
Indeed they are. The combination of distributed sensors, always-on data links and massive centralized processing power is going to change our world in dramatic ways. It can clearly be used for great good or great evil... it's going to be on all of us to keep a careful watch on the trends and to act, individually and collectively and through various channels, to make sure there's much more of the former than the latter.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
However, the *quality* of the information returned from a search is often questionable. So many of the "facts" presented on the web are really biased opinion these days and usually presented in a rather shallow format it seems.
Good highly detailed information is still mostly found in books I think. I don't see much replacing it on the internet except as shallow treatments of a subject.
You can get the summary of relevant information really quickly, get the gist of a subject effectively, but to get really good detailed knowledge of some specific subject - thats why I have a library at home and the public library or university library available elsewhere in the city (granted the data there is often dated by contrast).
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
A computer (and google) are like a shovel. A shovel is an extension to your hand, Google is an extension of your mind.
It's a tool. We've had tools for thousands of years.
Free Martian Whores!
Google might only do it for people who opt in, but I could easily see Facebook going the other way, given how they behave, or other groups finding ways to use it.
Right now, with google image search/search by image you can do some interesting things - the tech will only get better, and I can quite easily imagine that by the time this kind of thing really takes off it will only be easier to have software on these things that is home grown and doesn't give a whit about privacy options people picked.
I've long been one who feels that privacy, as we usually mean it, is dead, and has been replaced to some extent by anonymity. I live in Chicago and am probably on hundreds of video cameras every day - some for the police, some private - but nobody really cares enough to dig through that footage and figure ut what I'm up to. But eventually, when cameras are even more ubiquitous and are even more tied into networks, and we have even better tools for searching, I can really easily imagine a scenario where it's possible for anyone to put together an idea of where one has been and what one has done without much effort.
The nightmare scenario with these would be enabled in part because when you are in physical proximity to a person you could watch them, get the system to give you whatever information there is available about them (and information it thinks might be theirs, with an estimate of the match) and basically make stalking trivial and safe for the stalker. Or you could have a system to search through the sea of imagery out there looking for someone who doesn't want to be found by you (say a domestic abuse survivor being sought by her abuser...)
I think there will be solutions to problems, but it would require a cultural shift to valuing privacy more and to putting more protectins in place for citizens rather than the current system we seem to have where companies are basically allowed to own the digital you in exchange for your using their services. It will be interesting times for sure.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
That does raise the point of what those things record. ... ... You've record the naked child and it's live uploaded to the cloud. So you're a distributor of that content too.
You're in a park and a some mother lets a toddler run around naked in the fountain.Your going past and on hearing the child have fun and laughing it catches your attention and you turn and look - takes a few seconds for you to find the source and BAM!
When I'm in the park and have my own kid with me, I never know where to look when other people do let there kid run around naked. Men in the west have been made mental by the media with worry of accusations of being a peado.
That's a terrible analogy. Using the shovel does not impact the next person who uses "the" shovel or "a" shovel.
It would make more sense to say that we are becoming an extension of Google's mind than the other way around. Everything you do with Google has the potential to influence Google's perception of the world, access to information (not just data because we ADD relevant context) and value to other users.
If the shovel told you where to dig based on what it had learned from the thousands of other people who had recently dug using it, that would be a closer analogy.
Come play Moral Decay!
And, like people who rely on Google directions, you shove that spade through a gas line and go up in a ball of fire.
Don't rely on tools to think for you.
How a SHOE becomes an extension of a human FOOT!
Whoa! Dude!
What ATOMS are like, you know, LITTLE GALAXIES!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
How a HAMMER becomes an extention of a human HAND
Stop! You're assuming you can touch that.
How a SHOE becomes an extension of a human FOOT!
Wait, so does the sidewalk become an extension of the shoe? Do I become one with the city with every step I take. With every breath I take and every move I make will the city be watching me?
My goodness, I'm just musical today. :-D
And both are known to move a lot of shit.