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Eric Schmidt: Our Perception of the Internet Will Fade
Esra Erimez writes: Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Thursday predicted a change in how we perceive the internet. Schmidt says, "There will be so many IP addresses, so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won't even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room."
Or, without your permission, they are interacting with you.
Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room.
Wow. Does he realize how completely out of touch with reality that sounds? He says *imagine* when in the future, with [my] technology, you will be able to "interact with the things going on in the room."
NEWS FLASH! I can now, Eric Schmidt. And anyone can. All you have to do it turn off your cell phone and begin interacting!
What happens when two people enter the room, and they have different preferences?
Spouses already fight about the thermostat; who's preference is "the house" going to pick?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The advertising and government snoop won't really ASK for permission. It will be a Hobson's choice. Refuse to give permission and your devices stop working or you wind up on a watch list or worse.
I can already interact with things in the room. When I want the lamp to come on, I walk over and turn a little knob. When I want the TV to come on, I press a button on a remote. Behold! The future is now!
Proverbs 21:19
I've been in the tech world since the 80s and I'm not finding this vision of the future enticing at all. Now fully in middle age, I'm starting to regret the days and years of my life that have been wasted staring into a monitor or playing with the next gadget. I'm not convinced that having the internet seamlessly integrated into my life would be a desirable thing. I'm discovering that there's more pleasure and contentment in the reality that exists outside of the world of pervasive connectivity. I don't want to be constantly "interacting" with devices, nor do I want Mr. Schmid's company to have more opportunities to analyze my behavior and target me with more marketing messages.
Embrace the analog world.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
That's kind of my point ... most of the stuff I see from futurists assumes we have the resources and luxury to start everything from scratch to build the thing of the future.
The city of the future where everything glows, is connected, and is awesome? Yeah, right, we'll start all of our cities from scratch just for your magic technology. More accurately, you have the slums where this isn't, and the shiny new stuff where the rich live.
Same for this. Does he really think people are going to replace every damned thing in their lives so that it can be automated and interconnected? I'm sorry, but only a moron believes that. If I want to "interact" with my lamp I can walk over to the damned thing.
The entire article is pipe-dreams from Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others about how they're going to usher in a marvelous new future and make use of our data.
I'm afraid my answer to those entities is "go fuck yourself", because having "clear, pragmatic, market-based regulation" is code for "how can corporate douchebags guarantee access to our data for their own ends and profits while ensuring they don't have pesky laws which limit what they can do".
I'm afraid these entities are the last ones I'd entrust with my data, or to be driving the conversation about the limitations which need to be placed on them.
So, as I've said all along ... Internet of Things is designed to benefit the corporations who think it's great, is predicated on us all paying tons of money to buy crap which has this enabled, with the implicit assumption this is what the rest of us want, and that somehow this actually benefits us.
And, as usual, I find myself thinking I don't think this benefits me at all. It's just more apps and cell phones, and pointless tracking and analytics to allow asshole billionaires like Schmidt to buy another fucking yacht.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
My kids range in age from 5 to 9. This is already how they see the world.
Their first hint that the internet is a thing that you have to think about was when they got wifi devices and tried to use them in the car as we drove away from the house.
Before they made that realization, it was just something that things did. Part of the expected infrastructure of existence.
You know, I'm long since past the point where I fetishize technology. In fact, it often bores me to death, because it seems like it's technology for the sake of technology and doesn't add value to my life -- just clutter.
I don't carry a smart phone ... well, I do, but it hasn't got a data plan. It gets used to send text messages mostly. It has wifi, but it's mostly off.
I don't see personal value in controlling my lights from my smart phone -- or, for that matter, lights which change color. And definitely not color changing lights which are networked and talking to my smart phone.
Color changing networked lights connected to my smart phone learning my habits and schedule, reporting that upstream to google and doing who knows what else that it's not telling me about and signalling to my fridge that the butter should be softened because I might be home soon ... well, I'm afraid you've lost me at that point.
In fact, I find the prospect downright creepy.
Sorry, but I don't see my mission in life as owning every conceivable piece of technology and integrating it so tightly into my life that a power outage is going to leave me in the fetal position in the corner as I suddenly am disconnected from the world and can't turn on the lights.
So, I'll sit on my front porch shaking my first at you guys and your doo-dads and focus on things which don't end up with me having a chip implanted up my ass which lets the toilet seat know to start pre-warming because the frequency of sphincter contractions indicates an impending poo, and tells google to give me ads for toilet paper because I'm running low.
I'm afraid I simply don't care enough to play that silly game. :-P
Not get off my damned lawn!!
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Let's not underestimate the real power of data. Look at targeted advertising. It was really creepy a few years ago, wasn't it? Back when Target notified a teenage girl's family that she was pregnant (with helpful "she might like this" emails) before she told them? Ever wonder why that stuff doesn't happen so much anymore? It's because the advertising agencies know that it's super creepy so now something like 90% of ads are intentionally random. But they still get the 10% right.
You suggest the thermostat temperature alone may pique the interest of various surveillance agencies. I know you think you're joking, but this may be the one point of data they need to make an otherwise suspicious individual statistically significant. And don't make the mistake of thinking human beings are the ones suggesting what data is suspicious in what ways. The key to the entire data mining explosion is that when you have enough data about everything, you can set up an algorithm to figure out the statistical connections. Maybe it's really only suspicious if the thermostat is set 2 higher on Tuesday from 3am-4:45am. And 99% of the time that happens, it's because of a specific crime in progress.
We live in an age where we have been mostly liberated from the tyranny of humans trying to make those kinds of connections. Finally, with enough data about an individual, the computer knows what you're doing. The danger, of course, is still that humans will use that knowledge toward the wrong ends. First and foremost is the likelihood that human agents will abuse their power. Second is the likelihood that they will willfully misinterpret the results. And third is that they will almost certainly use the data to enforce existing rules rather than to analyze the actual social impact.
We have good reason to fear the invasion of our privacy. We have better reason to fear that anything else will truly understand what we are doing and why. We have the greatest reason to fear that this power will belong not to robot overlords but to people still bound by our legacy of rules instituted before this power existed.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
Why wouldn't you want to be able to be informed as to what everything in your house is doing
Are you fucking kidding me? Really?
People don't give two shits about that sort of thing.
People(consumers...) want things that are RELIABLE and CONVENIENT. They don't care how many loads a week they've done in their dishwasher or that they can remotely change their lights in the downstairs bathroom to purple...
Repeat after me: RELIABLE and CONVENIENT.
That is what people want in appliances, etc;
Anyone who deals with the hassles of home wifi and configuring home routers, etc, in addition to the usual pc/table/phone issues, upgrade and configuration hassles knows the IoT is a CF waiting to happen.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range