Monday, May 14, 2007

the future

According to Charlie (Shaping the Future), in the future:
  • With universal GPS, it will be impossible to become lost
  • Everyone will be able to keep a complete video recording of their whole life. "Sixty kilograms (of diamond) can store a lifelog for the entire human species for a century." The study of history will no longer be gappy. Total history.
  • All our objects will be on the internet, eg. teaspoons, lightbulbs, and friendly to us
  • Privacy will be an alien concept. You can see the beginning of this in the way that young people, in particular, reveal all sorts of details about their lives on line.
I think the inevitable loss of privacy there will fuel a political movement for a fundamentally different sort of non intrusive government or state apparatus. It's more sensible to fight for this than to throw away your mobile and go and live in a forest or a desert. That would be analogous to fighting for the right enjoyed by our ancestors, never to travel more than a few miles from their village.

See also, Four funerals and a wedding

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