Your comment seems to be taking the most extreme possible interpretation or outcome for each of these points, without considering that some people will still be quite capable of thinking.
FTFY. And I argue that this some doesn't make yet a proportion large enough for me to drop my privacy and expose me to the risk of being judged by a majority forcing the choice between "average main-stream thinking or get the hell out you... you... geek/freak/nerd". With the decline in the education quality and politicians registering success with campaigns based on "fact-free science", I don't feel secure enough. Makes sense?
I don't think Scott Adams is seriously proposing anybody act on his experiment. So while I agree that you need to address all the consequences (which is actually impossible)
Apologies, correction: I said all relevant consequences. Hey, I'll even relax the requirement, I'd say "first order effects", immediate consequences... and I'll still be right in Scott cherry picking.
I think your conclusion about the "dangerous set of consequences" is a little overblown.
Are you arguing that there are no dangerous consequences?
But it's your post, so if you're happy with Schrodinger's cat as "addressing a problem", then I don't see why Scott Adams' experiment doesn't "address a problem".
Please don't take me wrong: I'm not saying that Scott's experiment doesn't address a problem. I'm only saying that I fail to see what is this problem and asking you/others about what they think is the problem Scott had in mind.
So? They'd just have to move back to "first to invent"... the main problem with it was that it's too hard to figure out who first invented something, which is a problem that doesn't exist in our hypothetical transparent world.
Maye. I'm quite tired. You are hitting down every example that I put up but refusing to address the fundamental that in a "everything in the open" patents acts even more as a hindrance that a promoter for invention, by promoting the individualism over the collaboration effort.
Last chance: assuming that I see your work got in a dead-end with high chances you will stay there (e.g. because you are missing a whole body of knowledge in another area) and say I would know how to get over the obstacle, what is my incentive to help you? I can wait for you to give up, wait for some years, use what I know about your work and patent all by myself: it will be a known fact that you gave up. Or, if you choose to publish your incomplete work (non-patentable, because there is not yet a viable proof of concept), even better... cite your work and still patent my prototype. You say that you'll be knowing that I restarted your work from the point you stopped? What can you do? Rush even faster to patent now with my contribution but without me? Then you'll be the bad guy and me the "hurt party" - equally un-ethical.
What's the cause of all the above? The fact that a monopoly over the result of an invention is an incentive good enough to promote egotistical motivation over collaboration.
Now, consider that your database covers millions of people and thousands of movies: you can probably start to predict with a surprisingly high degree of accuracy how an individual will respond to a new movie once you've got a decent sample of their ratings for the movies they have seen.
Can you please provide some numbers? How high is this accuracy?
(can it also predict that I might like watching movies but abhor the idea of using Netflix? This parenthesis only to exemplify that "statistical aberrations" can take more forms that any statistical model can predict... simply because being a model it will inherently be a simplified reflection of the reality).
Really? If I can access your research and have a better idea how to solve a problem you stumbled on just at the end of it, what stops me in applying for the patent ahead of you?
The fact that I'm the original inventor grants me the right to file the patent, and as everything is completely transparent (at least in this hypothetical world) everyone knows that my work pre-dated yours and you were copying my work. You can't hide the fact that you are accessing my research...
Haven't you heard that the USPO is moving from "first to invent" to "first to file"? Me filling a patent based on your work with my "polish" sooner than you would be still within "playing by the rules of the game": while it may not please you, it would be still legal. Or do you think that "everything is in the open" suddenly will make the people more moral and their behavior more ethical?
The only rational and ethical way to solve it it would be a collaboration work: me helping you to get over your difficulty, others contributing their bits and pieces and everybody building new structures on top of the existing ones. But in this case the patent laws become a serious hindrance: this is why I do agree with the GGGP post when saying "I like the idea that it would kill patents though"
I'm not sure that it does, or that it needs to. It takes a premise (that of a society with no privacy) and tries to logically think through the consequences (or at least some of the consequences, as Scott Adams sees them) of such a premise.
Some of the consequences is not enough. All the relevant consequences would have been good, but Scott Adams is just cherry picking, which make it a very dangerous set of consequences to act on.
It no more addresses a problem that Schrodinger's famous thought experiment (the one with the cat) does.
Apologies, but "Schrodinger's cat" experiment does have a very specific purpose: it provide a "car analogy" for putting into evidence the mind-shift one needs to make to understand what the quantum-mechanics is about (i.e. dealing with facts that you don't know for sure and any attempt to make sure will modify the very fact you want to know about).
There is no "privileged/inner circle/elite"; They are spokespeople, and they are elected, and their actions are documented and tracked the same as everyone elses in that society.
It's elegant, but it wouldn't happen.
It would happen because "elites" are not necessarily limited to politics. Wealthy people are not elected, yet they do have better "bargaining power" the you, even if only because they can afford to wait, but you don't.
I see what you're getting at, and I think it's relevant, but with so many watchers, I think the problem is somewhat mitigated. So, for example, in your small print type hidden clause example, it's not necessary that everybody find that one clause.
You see... if the majority of the society cannot support "the risk of losing the opportunity" and the elite proposes the "contact" as a "limited time opportunity", then it's only by chance that somebody will discover it.
On another line, please note that I presented you only with an example and in no way I pretended that this is the single way to abuse the system. What another? "Boil the frog" concept - if you allow my this language abuse: me the elite feeding you slowly with "advantages" that you will most likely "buy in" but leading to a "dead-end" for you (like the "steepest decent" or "conjugate gradients" finding of the optimum, which have the danger to leave you in a local optimum, far away from the global one).
While in the first case I presented a strategy of a "volume overload" attacking your limited ability to process a high volume in a short time, the second example is on the line of "temporal overload" - I;m attacking your limited ability to explore all the consequences your choice will have. And, believe me, a creative malicious mind can find lots of other ways to overload.
There are other presumably more exciting things I could be trying to do with my life, but I don't want the risk until I actually have some solid investments/savings to back me up if I end up not being able to make any money out of them.
Ah, yes, the American dream. Good luck (because you do need it: no risk, small reward).
This would not kill patents; in fact patents are specifically intended to make what you're doing transparent. Anyone can look it up and read a clear description of your patented process.
Really? If I can access your research and have a better idea how to solve a problem you stumbled on just at the end of it, what stops me in applying for the patent ahead of you? What would be your motivation for research then? Only the satisfaction that you saw your research being set into practice? If so, what's the point of using the patent system as a motivational factor?
With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about.
Analysis of the necessary sort is already automated in such areas as Netflix's "suggested movies for you".
The suggestion is still based on a statistical analysis, with no guarantees that it will fit everybody's tastes. Actually, I'd argue the more samples you have in your statistical set and the more parameters you want to correlate, the higher the dispersion and the higher the numbers in which you are likely to be wrong.
I agree that is what most likely WOULD happen but it is NOT the end result of actually applying intelligence, but greed.
Not greed (actually, "greed" is a risk-taking motivational factor), but fear.
Fear of the unknown, fear about "out of norm/average", fear about unknown consequences of change, especially when change is in relation with "social change".
I think the answer in this case is "to everyone, forever". There wouldn't be a privileged set of monitors, everyone could watch what everyone else is doing, or has done.
Yes, I can imagine it. Until everybody is doing nothing except watching all the others exclusively busy watching all the others doing nothing but watching [etc like in a mirrors labyrinth]... Until somebody does something and is expelled from the community because the one dares to break the trance.
I think you are missing the premise of Scott Adam's thought experiment here. In his experiment everybody knows everything about everybody. So there really aren't any watchers, or everybody is a watcher if you prefer.
So if everybody is a watcher, who watches the watchers? Answer: everybody.
Two words: "Information overload". Can be even used abusively to hide relevant, critical yet not obvious details - like dumping a humongous thousandths-pages contact proposal, with a single "small print type" phrase in the mid of it, and the request of signing it by next week. The "privileged/inner circle/elite" have a huge advantage: they lose nothing if not signed, can always pretend "it's a small mistake, thanks for pointing out", can afford to wait (less sensible to the "cost of opportunity").
Food for thought: they cannot stop criminal behavior within the walls of our prisons, where tracking and surveillance are not only OK but required. Why would large-scale tracking and surveillance of people be any more successful?
The folk-wisdom (thus the saying) goes like: if duct-tape (explosives/violence) doesn't work, you don't use enough.
Rationally, it doesn't make sense: you are just temporary patching, not actually addressing the damage. But... living for periods of 4 years (between election), appealing to "rational thinking" usually leads not only to controversial but even to "courageous decisions" (in the "Yes, minister" sense of it)
If everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, was tracked, chipped, monitored, followed, & watched AND the information was 100% transparent and available to EVERYONE, then well... sure, it'd be a great place to live.
Sorry, no, not even then!!!
Rationale in brief: "information overload" leading to "social stagnation"
Expanded explanation: tracking/chipping/etc results in a huge amount of data. Making sense of it is beyond individual power, all that remains is a "statistical approach" (like: "statistical mechanics" because you don't stand a chance of understanding what's happening if you have full information on every particle).
What this means socially? Well, every "statistical anomaly" is treated as a "deviant life-style" and pushed aside, until the entire society is under "tyranny of the majority", risk taking (thus innovation among others) is discouraged, the society is stagnating (living happy for two generations, then fading slowly).
This city of no privacy wouldn't need much of a police force because no criminal would agree to live in such a monitored situation.
Bad workers would end up voluntarily moving out of the city to find work.
Studies have shown that peer pressure has a huge impact on <conservation> [not only: replace with anything you imagine]
Every circle has a periphery periphery that's formed by the points the farthest from the mid-point. The current social tendency is to eliminate them and... inherently form another periphery. We've seen it in the history many times.
Advertisements would transform from a pervasive nuisance into something more like useful information. Advertisers would know so much about your lifestyle and preferences that you would only see ads that made perfect sense for your situation.
Since when "making sense" relates with marketing? (capture the attention? yes. Stick a message in mind, even subliminal? Yes. Create/maintain, if possible, an "addiction"? Wow, of course. Making sense? God forbid it, the people may start thinking "Why the hell do I need a new X every Y months?")
As a consumer, you'd know where to get the best prices.
Choice based on prices only? Goodbye competition!
When you considered applying for a new job, you'd have access to the latest employee opinion survey for that business.
Goodbye, start-ups. Sorry, no historical references, won't work for you
Confusopolies wouldn't be tolerated in this city.
Confusopolies??!!! Say, for example, the company will publish the documentation of the trials for a new drug. Me, Joe Sixpack, am expected to clearly understand what are the consequences of the drug, isn't it? 'Cause if I can't understand it, is should be a confusopoly: out of the city with them, they are clearly belonging to the periphery!
I know you don't want to live in that city. I'm just curious what sort of price, in economic terms, and in convenience and in social benefits, we pay for our privacy. My guess is that it's expensive.
Sure... would you try to count the cost of living in a county in which the "Tyrannical Majority" is the rule of life, where risk taking and innovation is a "fringe", where the marketers are free to "spin the facts" abusing the lack of privacy and using an "information deluge" as a mean to "inform the prospective buyer"?
Based on the episode of "Top gear", I'd recommend Scott Adams to move his pale urban ass in the red-neck country of Alabama to have an experience of this life-style. He shouldn't even give up his privacy to have a taste of it (actually, I reckon he must not give away his privacy if he wants to stay alive)
My guess is that it's expensive.
Moreover, I find it insanely oxymoronic and cognitive dissonant to live and think a "consumerist society" (aka "economy of waste") and still be worried about "the cost of maintaining the privacy".
Probably that, for once, the army is doing something useful by doing nothing (i.e. abstaining from an action)? (can I hope to see more such occasions?) Or sort of a notification that Japan is in "extreme demand for networks" (... and maybe you should limit you pr0n daily quota too, especially hentai, at least for a while)?
Prediction: if there's no accepted standard within a year, Apple will create one. Further prediction: Slashdotters will universally hate it. The remaining 99.999% of the world will love it.
Ah, what an relief for ATM-skimmers: no contact required, ISO standard doesn't yet specify any protection against man-in-the-middle. Even if it would be so, the communication is small in size and one can easily jam the receiver and force the attempt of the same transaction enough numbers of time to have a good base for a cryptographic attack... especially since part of the encrypted information is known (the total of the docket).
worries about vandalism of the 30 pin connector on vending machines are dismissed by Steve jobs, "that connector is indestructible! we have never had a failure of one!"
And if it doesn't function, it is the users fault: they are griping the phone the wrong way.
Slashdot Mirror
Your comment seems to be taking the most extreme possible interpretation or outcome for each of these points, without considering that some people will still be quite capable of thinking.
FTFY. And I argue that this some doesn't make yet a proportion large enough for me to drop my privacy and expose me to the risk of being judged by a majority forcing the choice between "average main-stream thinking or get the hell out you... you... geek/freak/nerd". With the decline in the education quality and politicians registering success with campaigns based on "fact-free science", I don't feel secure enough. Makes sense?
I don't think Scott Adams is seriously proposing anybody act on his experiment. So while I agree that you need to address all the consequences (which is actually impossible)
Apologies, correction: I said all relevant consequences. Hey, I'll even relax the requirement, I'd say "first order effects", immediate consequences... and I'll still be right in Scott cherry picking.
I think your conclusion about the "dangerous set of consequences" is a little overblown.
Are you arguing that there are no dangerous consequences?
But it's your post, so if you're happy with Schrodinger's cat as "addressing a problem", then I don't see why Scott Adams' experiment doesn't "address a problem".
Please don't take me wrong: I'm not saying that Scott's experiment doesn't address a problem. I'm only saying that I fail to see what is this problem and asking you/others about what they think is the problem Scott had in mind.
So? They'd just have to move back to "first to invent"... the main problem with it was that it's too hard to figure out who first invented something, which is a problem that doesn't exist in our hypothetical transparent world.
Maye. I'm quite tired. You are hitting down every example that I put up but refusing to address the fundamental that in a "everything in the open" patents acts even more as a hindrance that a promoter for invention, by promoting the individualism over the collaboration effort.
Last chance: assuming that I see your work got in a dead-end with high chances you will stay there (e.g. because you are missing a whole body of knowledge in another area) and say I would know how to get over the obstacle, what is my incentive to help you? I can wait for you to give up, wait for some years, use what I know about your work and patent all by myself: it will be a known fact that you gave up.
Or, if you choose to publish your incomplete work (non-patentable, because there is not yet a viable proof of concept), even better... cite your work and still patent my prototype. You say that you'll be knowing that I restarted your work from the point you stopped? What can you do? Rush even faster to patent now with my contribution but without me? Then you'll be the bad guy and me the "hurt party" - equally un-ethical.
What's the cause of all the above? The fact that a monopoly over the result of an invention is an incentive good enough to promote egotistical motivation over collaboration.
Now, consider that your database covers millions of people and thousands of movies: you can probably start to predict with a surprisingly high degree of accuracy how an individual will respond to a new movie once you've got a decent sample of their ratings for the movies they have seen.
Can you please provide some numbers? How high is this accuracy?
(can it also predict that I might like watching movies but abhor the idea of using Netflix? This parenthesis only to exemplify that "statistical aberrations" can take more forms that any statistical model can predict... simply because being a model it will inherently be a simplified reflection of the reality).
Really? If I can access your research and have a better idea how to solve a problem you stumbled on just at the end of it, what stops me in applying for the patent ahead of you?
The fact that I'm the original inventor grants me the right to file the patent, and as everything is completely transparent (at least in this hypothetical world) everyone knows that my work pre-dated yours and you were copying my work. You can't hide the fact that you are accessing my research...
Haven't you heard that the USPO is moving from "first to invent" to "first to file"? Me filling a patent based on your work with my "polish" sooner than you would be still within "playing by the rules of the game": while it may not please you, it would be still legal.
Or do you think that "everything is in the open" suddenly will make the people more moral and their behavior more ethical?
The only rational and ethical way to solve it it would be a collaboration work: me helping you to get over your difficulty, others contributing their bits and pieces and everybody building new structures on top of the existing ones. But in this case the patent laws become a serious hindrance: this is why I do agree with the GGGP post when saying "I like the idea that it would kill patents though"
Yeah, felony. While spending us into oblivion at a deficit of over $200 billion per month.... Nice priorities dickheads.
US of A is no longer an exporter of goods, so if bread is no longer a merchandise, what else it can sell? Circus (movies) and vanity (fashion).
I'm not sure that it does, or that it needs to. It takes a premise (that of a society with no privacy) and tries to logically think through the consequences (or at least some of the consequences, as Scott Adams sees them) of such a premise.
Some of the consequences is not enough. All the relevant consequences would have been good, but Scott Adams is just cherry picking, which make it a very dangerous set of consequences to act on.
It no more addresses a problem that Schrodinger's famous thought experiment (the one with the cat) does.
Apologies, but "Schrodinger's cat" experiment does have a very specific purpose: it provide a "car analogy" for putting into evidence the mind-shift one needs to make to understand what the quantum-mechanics is about (i.e. dealing with facts that you don't know for sure and any attempt to make sure will modify the very fact you want to know about).
There is no "privileged/inner circle/elite"; They are spokespeople, and they are elected, and their actions are documented and tracked the same as everyone elses in that society.
It's elegant, but it wouldn't happen.
It would happen because "elites" are not necessarily limited to politics. Wealthy people are not elected, yet they do have better "bargaining power" the you, even if only because they can afford to wait, but you don't.
I see what you're getting at, and I think it's relevant, but with so many watchers, I think the problem is somewhat mitigated. So, for example, in your small print type hidden clause example, it's not necessary that everybody find that one clause.
You see... if the majority of the society cannot support "the risk of losing the opportunity" and the elite proposes the "contact" as a "limited time opportunity", then it's only by chance that somebody will discover it.
On another line, please note that I presented you only with an example and in no way I pretended that this is the single way to abuse the system.
What another? "Boil the frog" concept - if you allow my this language abuse: me the elite feeding you slowly with "advantages" that you will most likely "buy in" but leading to a "dead-end" for you (like the "steepest decent" or "conjugate gradients" finding of the optimum, which have the danger to leave you in a local optimum, far away from the global one).
While in the first case I presented a strategy of a "volume overload" attacking your limited ability to process a high volume in a short time, the second example is on the line of "temporal overload" - I;m attacking your limited ability to explore all the consequences your choice will have. And, believe me, a creative malicious mind can find lots of other ways to overload.
There are other presumably more exciting things I could be trying to do with my life, but I don't want the risk until I actually have some solid investments/savings to back me up if I end up not being able to make any money out of them.
Ah, yes, the American dream. Good luck (because you do need it: no risk, small reward).
Making an exception for the bed and bath means that politics and business would always be held there.
"Gang-bang meeting with the CEO" on an "executive-board bed size"?
This would not kill patents; in fact patents are specifically intended to make what you're doing transparent. Anyone can look it up and read a clear description of your patented process.
Really? If I can access your research and have a better idea how to solve a problem you stumbled on just at the end of it, what stops me in applying for the patent ahead of you? What would be your motivation for research then? Only the satisfaction that you saw your research being set into practice? If so, what's the point of using the patent system as a motivational factor?
With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about.
Analysis of the necessary sort is already automated in such areas as Netflix's "suggested movies for you".
The suggestion is still based on a statistical analysis, with no guarantees that it will fit everybody's tastes. Actually, I'd argue the more samples you have in your statistical set and the more parameters you want to correlate, the higher the dispersion and the higher the numbers in which you are likely to be wrong.
I agree that is what most likely WOULD happen but it is NOT the end result of actually applying intelligence, but greed.
Not greed (actually, "greed" is a risk-taking motivational factor), but fear. Fear of the unknown, fear about "out of norm/average", fear about unknown consequences of change, especially when change is in relation with "social change".
Before everybody get's their panties in a bunch, the key line from TFA is this:
Ok, trying to keep the thought-experiment mind-frame. Only, would you mind to tell me what problem this experiment tries to address?
I think the answer in this case is "to everyone, forever". There wouldn't be a privileged set of monitors, everyone could watch what everyone else is doing, or has done.
Yes, I can imagine it. Until everybody is doing nothing except watching all the others exclusively busy watching all the others doing nothing but watching [etc like in a mirrors labyrinth]... Until somebody does something and is expelled from the community because the one dares to break the trance.
Utopias/dystopias are not stable configurations.
Even if they'd be, I argue they will be a static equilibrium=stagnation.
I think you are missing the premise of Scott Adam's thought experiment here. In his experiment everybody knows everything about everybody. So there really aren't any watchers, or everybody is a watcher if you prefer.
So if everybody is a watcher, who watches the watchers? Answer: everybody.
Two words: "Information overload". Can be even used abusively to hide relevant, critical yet not obvious details - like dumping a humongous thousandths-pages contact proposal, with a single "small print type" phrase in the mid of it, and the request of signing it by next week.
The "privileged/inner circle/elite" have a huge advantage: they lose nothing if not signed, can always pretend "it's a small mistake, thanks for pointing out", can afford to wait (less sensible to the "cost of opportunity").
Food for thought: they cannot stop criminal behavior within the walls of our prisons, where tracking and surveillance are not only OK but required. Why would large-scale tracking and surveillance of people be any more successful?
The folk-wisdom (thus the saying) goes like: if duct-tape (explosives/violence) doesn't work, you don't use enough.
Rationally, it doesn't make sense: you are just temporary patching, not actually addressing the damage. But... living for periods of 4 years (between election), appealing to "rational thinking" usually leads not only to controversial but even to "courageous decisions" (in the "Yes, minister" sense of it)
If everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, was tracked, chipped, monitored, followed, & watched AND the information was 100% transparent and available to EVERYONE, then well... sure, it'd be a great place to live.
Sorry, no, not even then!!!
Rationale in brief: "information overload" leading to "social stagnation"
Expanded explanation: tracking/chipping/etc results in a huge amount of data. Making sense of it is beyond individual power, all that remains is a "statistical approach" (like: "statistical mechanics" because you don't stand a chance of understanding what's happening if you have full information on every particle).
What this means socially? Well, every "statistical anomaly" is treated as a "deviant life-style" and pushed aside, until the entire society is under "tyranny of the majority", risk taking (thus innovation among others) is discouraged, the society is stagnating (living happy for two generations, then fading slowly).
This city of no privacy wouldn't need much of a police force because no criminal would agree to live in such a monitored situation.
Bad workers would end up voluntarily moving out of the city to find work.
Studies have shown that peer pressure has a huge impact on <conservation> [not only: replace with anything you imagine]
Every circle has a periphery periphery that's formed by the points the farthest from the mid-point. The current social tendency is to eliminate them and... inherently form another periphery. We've seen it in the history many times.
Advertisements would transform from a pervasive nuisance into something more like useful information. Advertisers would know so much about your lifestyle and preferences that you would only see ads that made perfect sense for your situation.
Since when "making sense" relates with marketing? (capture the attention? yes. Stick a message in mind, even subliminal? Yes. Create/maintain, if possible, an "addiction"? Wow, of course. Making sense? God forbid it, the people may start thinking "Why the hell do I need a new X every Y months?")
As a consumer, you'd know where to get the best prices.
Choice based on prices only? Goodbye competition!
When you considered applying for a new job, you'd have access to the latest employee opinion survey for that business.
Goodbye, start-ups. Sorry, no historical references, won't work for you
Confusopolies wouldn't be tolerated in this city.
Confusopolies??!!! Say, for example, the company will publish the documentation of the trials for a new drug. Me, Joe Sixpack, am expected to clearly understand what are the consequences of the drug, isn't it? 'Cause if I can't understand it, is should be a confusopoly: out of the city with them, they are clearly belonging to the periphery!
I know you don't want to live in that city. I'm just curious what sort of price, in economic terms, and in convenience and in social benefits, we pay for our privacy. My guess is that it's expensive.
Sure... would you try to count the cost of living in a county in which the "Tyrannical Majority" is the rule of life, where risk taking and innovation is a "fringe", where the marketers are free to "spin the facts" abusing the lack of privacy and using an "information deluge" as a mean to "inform the prospective buyer"?
Based on the episode of "Top gear", I'd recommend Scott Adams to move his pale urban ass in the red-neck country of Alabama to have an experience of this life-style. He shouldn't even give up his privacy to have a taste of it (actually, I reckon he must not give away his privacy if he wants to stay alive)
My guess is that it's expensive.
Moreover, I find it insanely oxymoronic and cognitive dissonant to live and think a "consumerist society" (aka "economy of waste") and still be worried about "the cost of maintaining the privacy".
So how is this "Stuff That Matters"?
Probably that, for once, the army is doing something useful by doing nothing (i.e. abstaining from an action)? (can I hope to see more such occasions?)
Or sort of a notification that Japan is in "extreme demand for networks" (... and maybe you should limit you pr0n daily quota too, especially hentai, at least for a while)?
Prediction: if there's no accepted standard within a year, Apple will create one. Further prediction: Slashdotters will universally hate it. The remaining 99.999% of the world will love it.
Ah, what an relief for ATM-skimmers: no contact required, ISO standard doesn't yet specify any protection against man-in-the-middle. Even if it would be so, the communication is small in size and one can easily jam the receiver and force the attempt of the same transaction enough numbers of time to have a good base for a cryptographic attack... especially since part of the encrypted information is known (the total of the docket).
worries about vandalism of the 30 pin connector on vending machines are dismissed by Steve jobs, "that connector is indestructible! we have never had a failure of one!"
And if it doesn't function, it is the users fault: they are griping the phone the wrong way.
No it's not the same. I had a nokia in 2004 that did this and you could see the balance, the transaction amount, and control if it was on or not.
;) Hey, I can't believe there isn't an app for that! ;)