The Shape of the Future

Last week, Sci-Fi writer Charlie Stross was invited to speak at a technology open day at engineering consultancy TNG Technology Consulting in Munich. He's posted a transcript of his discussion on his website, which features a fascinating analysis of where technology is going in the next 10-25 years. Instead of envisioning outlandish future developments, he looks at what the impact might be on society from very reasonable iterations of today's SOTA. "10Tb is an interesting number. That's a megabit for every second in a year -- there are roughly 10 million seconds per year. That's enough to store a live DivX video stream -- compressed a lot relative to a DVD, but the same overall resolution -- of everything I look at for a year, including time I spend sleeping, or in the bathroom. Realistically, with multiplexing, it puts three or four video channels and a sound channel and other telemetry -- a heart monitor, say, a running GPS/Galileo location signal, everything I type and every mouse event I send -- onto that chip, while I'm awake ... Add optical character recognition on the fly for any text you look at, speech-to-text for anything you say, and it's all indexed and searchable. 'What was the title of the book I looked at and wanted to remember last Thursday at 3pm?' Think of it as google for real life. "

Memories!

[Neeth]

"You're talking about memories."

Interesting but...

[Silver Sloth]

From TFA

As projections of a near future go, the one I've presented in this talk is pretty poor. In my defense, I'd like to say that the only thing I can be sure of is that I'm probably wrong, or at least missing something as big as the internet, or antibiotics.

Indeed, in fifty years of reading future preditions the one thing they all have in common is that they're all wrong. The next big thing always comes out of left field and is poo-pooed by the 'experts'. It's good to see that Charlie Stross understands that.

Life Recorders

[inviolet]

With the proper ironclad legal protections, Life Recorders will be a massive boon. Accused of a crime? No problem, just open up the datafile, fastforward to the time of the event, and see that we were actually sitting in the basement surfing alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.midgets.

And for those times when we want to actually bring a midget home, we might want to stop recording. After all, the purpose of privacy is to protect ourselves from the erratic rationality of our fellow humans' moral judgment (as well as the wholesale absence of rationality behind some of our laws). We've still got evolutionary wiring left over that causes us to feel physical pain when others disapprove, and so privacy is a rational demand.

But of course turning off our Life Recorder will be considered a forfeiture of our right to be Presumed Innocent.

Uh oh

[clickclickdrone]

If we all get to used to a machine recalling stuff for us, we'll soon get too lazy to do it ourselves. I've already found my handwriting sucks because I type 99% of the time and my memory for certain things is worse because I never really have to use it - stuff I want to know is either on my hard drive or a Google searech away.

Re:Memories!

[rvw]

"You're talking about memories."

What I see, what I remember, what is happening in front of me, those are three different things, although they might have a resemblence in normal life. It would be quite interesting to see what you didn't see.

In the cinema?

[Timo_UK]

I don't think they will let you in with a camera mounted on your head.

Re:Interesting but...

[brunnock]

They're not all wrong. Alexis de Tocqueville predicted that America and Russia would become rival superpowers back in 1835.

Re:Life Recorders

[john83]

With the proper ironclad legal protections, Life Recorders will be a massive boon. Accused of a crime? No problem, just open up the datafile, fastforward to the time of the event, and see that we were actually sitting in the basement surfing alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.midgets.

All of which would be great if it wasn't for the fact that if we can read it, sooner or later, someone will figure out how to write to it.

Re:The Movie you're looking for is called

[Eivind]

Your entire life as such, is worthless if for no other reason than that it'd take literally a lifetime to watch it.

There's some bits of it though, that would be nice to keep. And here's the thing, you don't know beforehand which bits that is. Sometimes you discover it later, on occasion *MUCH* later.

That girl sitting next to you on the bus today ? It don't matter, unless she ends up eventually becoming your wife, in which case you migth very well find it amusing to have a recorded video of your very first meeting. (or not, but -some- people would, which is the entire point)

The only way of being able to get at the interesting bits though, is recording a lot of stuff, on the hunch that *some* of it will be interesting and/or useful. For the same reason, basically, that many people keep *all* receipts for expensive stuff they buy -- because inevitably -some- of the stuff will break down, and then you may need the receipt in order to get a guarantee-repair or a refund.

Re:Uh oh

[dave420]

Just as most of us can't survive without AC and a supermarket round the corner. Don't labour under the misconception that we're somehow self-sufficient at the moment and have lost none of our previous skills - it's called progress. We, as a species, will always be losing some skills and gaining new ones. Imagine the skills we can learn when we don't have to rely on flaky memories. Dropping standards in handwriting is a good example - it drops because we simply don't need it any more. It's a good thing :)

Re:Interesting but...

[elrous0]

I'm a huge fan of serious science fiction and have been a fan of Stross (and contemporary "posthuman" writer Greg Egan) for some time. But he is not alone in this realization. No serious science fiction writer in the last 30 years has, to my knowledge, been so arrogant as to think he can accurately predict the future. Only a damn fool thinks that he can predict even the *near* future.

Good science fiction writers know that science fiction really isn't about the future at all. Serious science fiction is more a commentary on our present, and on the human condition.

Watch out for MPAA/RIAA

[Comboman]

Life Recorders will be a massive boon. Accused of a crime? No problem...

But using a life recorder IS a crime already according to the MPAA/RIAA. At the movie theater, listening to the radio, watching a baseball game, reading a book, at a live concert (except for the Grateful Dead), etc. etc.

Re:Interesting but...

[sgt_doom]

The closest successful future predictions I've ever read - although disguised as S.F. stories - was the earliest works (short stories, especially) by Robert A. Heinlein. Examine the sociopolitical trends he predicted - now take a sloooow look around you.....

Re:Uh oh

[dave420]

I was using AC as an example, as whole swathes of the south-western US wouldn't be able to survive without their AC, and indeed water supply. I was referring to us no longer being hunter-gatherers, that we've lost most (all?) of those skills, and replaced them with other skills more useful, as they work with the technology we've got. If we didn't, we'd just be like chimps with PCs. Still doing our ages-old thing, but with new technology. It's only when the technology matches the skills of the user that it gets useful.