What will happen when EVERYTHING is recorded?

[realpaladin]

Ray Kurzweil. Interesting fellow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Kurzweil

Argh... blind to the obvious

 

[ktesibios]

You should read "The Light of Other Days" by A.C Clark and another guy.

It is an SF novel adressing that kind of issue.

The basic premise is that media are using small wormhole to "remote view" parts of the world. They find out that by adjusting some variable, not only can they spy remote part of the Earth but they can also adjust the time variable and spy on every past event on Earth. Ultimately the service becomes as ubiquitous as Internet.

It is interesting and sometimes optimistic.


There is some major upheaval, particularly related to the history of religion, privacy does not exist anymore since anyone can track what you did during your whole life but there is some good side effects : corruption disappears, it is virtually impossible to commit a crime, etc..

Worth a read IMHO.

T.L. Sherred got there first with E for Effort

 

[Piscivore]

Look at what we're seeing in Iran. It is a very repressive country, yet people on the street with nothing more than a cell phone can change the course of events by recording the government atrocities. They can mail them via satellite to news stations. Look at the Rodney King affair. Riots occurred across large parts of the state because some amateur videographer caught a brutal beating by the police. Look at Mark Sanford, caught because one of his mistress's former lovers had her e-mail tracked.

Is there anything that is unavailable to public scrutiny these days? Yes, probably so, but as time passes, it will become less and less. Video cameras are so cheap and so compact and recording space is so plentiful that if you wanted to, you could record almost every minute of your lives. Suppose (and I got this idea from David Brin) that you affixed a tiny camera to your glasses and had it feed a continuous recording device? Suppose everybody did something like that? Could our current technology handle it? Maybe not, but we're not far away.

So what happens when everything is recorded? Will it mean an end to most crime? Will it mean an end to privacy? And most importantly, will this be good for society or bad? Certainly we can't argue that reducing crime is good. But at what cost? Is it worth it? Can we learn to live in a truly open society where nobody has secrets that can't be discovered by a determined hacker?

It is indeed a brave new world, but not the kind Huxley envisioned. It is one where all information is available. How will we handle it?

I'd say start with the women's fitting rooms and lavatories, but Rule 34 has already taken care of that.

 

[aerosolben]

It's a great question. Kurzweil holds an optimistic view.

Reminds me of Stephenson.

How big a slice of the Internet do you think Google has indexed?

Not enough, according to them, I'd say. I suspect much of the deep web will become accessible over the next few years - the area is fairly well-understood and the remaining problems do not seem especially insurmountable. And there's a tremendous potential payoff if someone like Microsoft manages to get there first.

 

[Tricky]

You should read "The Light of Other Days" by A.C Clark and another guy.

It is an SF novel adressing that kind of issue.

The basic premise is that media are using small wormhole to "remote view" parts of the world. They find out that by adjusting some variable, not only can they spy remote part of the Earth but they can also adjust the time variable and spy on every past event on Earth. Ultimately the service becomes as ubiquitous as Internet.

It is interesting and sometimes optimistic.


There is some major upheaval, particularly related to the history of religion, privacy does not exist anymore since anyone can track what you did during your whole life but there is some good side effects : corruption disappears, it is virtually impossible to commit a crime, etc..

Worth a read IMHO.

I'll have a look, though the brief synopsis makes it look more like a couple of sci-fi books about time manipulation. The "other guy" is Stephen Baxter.

In honesty, I have to admit that this is a topic I have thought about a lot since reading a non-fiction book by my favorite science fiction author, David Brin, called The Transparent Society. He makes a lot of good points both on why this will be good for human society as well as the perils. He touches a lot on the crime aspect, as well as the "corporate secrets" aspect. Both, he feels, will become as outdated as slide rules.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I would have said the same thing about the internet 10 or 15 years ago, and then came Google.

I can now find MY OWN home movies shot around 1975 by searching Google! 20 years ago I thought those movies were gone forever

Think Google is done evolving?

How would your home movies have gotten digitized and uploaded?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

They know about my "system!"

I knew I shouldn't have gotten that DTV converter box.

As if you had a choice. Comcast just forced their customers to get a digital converter. I'll be ranting on another thread about that one coming right up.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

As one opposed to a totalitarian state, I find some comfort in the notion of the ratio of recorded data vs. the time required to observe it. Big brother simply doesn't have enough time to read all our diaries; to find out what we were doing in that bathroom stall.....

And then they invented data mining. .....

 

[JoeyDonuts]

As if you had a choice. Comcast just forced their customers to get a digital converter. I'll be ranting on another thread about that one coming right up.

That was a joke, actually. There's nothing nefarious at all about the switch. There's always growing pains when a new broadcast standard is implemented.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Just so you know, I'm recording everything in this thread

 

[Hokulele]

I'll have a look, though the brief synopsis makes it look more like a couple of sci-fi books about time manipulation. The "other guy" is Stephen Baxter.

I have read that book, and although the first part was mostly about time manipulation, the latter part was mostly about the impact on society, including a group that developed a way to effectively hide from the monitoring. It was pretty interesting. The authors also had to come up with a plot device that kept people from finding out what really happened at Jesus' crucifixion.

 

[Mark6]

My ideal future inclueds cameras on us all and on all vehicles like the Google street-view cameras that are on a short-loop recording and not live-fed anywhere unless and until there's a criminal incident or accident when a witness would trigger the last 5 mins or whatever from all cameras within the locality to be sent to a 'police' or justice department to assess what just happened. Obviously this would depend on the authorities being trustworthy enough for people to be happy with this which is why it's ridiculously idealistic.

Yes, it is ridiculously idealistic. My more realistic take -- let the view from all these cameras be available to EVERYONE. If a policeman stops me and decides to "find" a bag of pot in my trunk, his car camera will show only what he wants it to show. In such situation I'd much rather have access to local building cameras showing the scene from multiple angles.

I do not trust law enforcement, in this country or any other. And privacy is GONE -- get used to it. Given these premises, I want police to be as much in public view as anyone else.

 

[Skeptic]

How have we handled the internet? It enables some to become more informed, better critical thinkers, and generally smarter. For others it reinforces their paranoia and their fantasies.

Well, THOSE are two euphemisms for "surfing for porn" I haven't heard used in quite that way before...

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

That was a joke, actually. There's nothing nefarious at all about the switch. There's always growing pains when a new broadcast standard is implemented.

This had little to do with any new broadcast standard. It had to do with charging money for something I bought from someone else. I bought a TV with a feature. The cable company now wants to charge me for the feature they never sold me in the first place.

 

[rustypouch]

To answer the OP:

The police will still lose the recordings when they have been accused of wrongdoing.

 

[INRM]

Tricky,

When everything is recorded, privacy will cease to exist.


RandFan,


Ray Kurzweil is a nut...

Kurzweil's sci-fi views stand in contrast to some voices of pessimism worrying about how the electronic world enables government spying, companies intruding on privacy, and technological divides between rich and poor.
But Kurzweil should know better than some. His experience in artificial intelligence and its applications to tasks such as optical character recognition have given him industry respect, while investors and high-tech companies with newfound prominence pour billions into research efforts.

Miniaturization and ever-higher resolution of brain scans are two trends accelerating technological change that will push together by 2035, Kurzweil predicted. Tiny robots, sent out through blood vessels, will latch onto individual neurons in the brain, he said, where they can monitor or control each brain cell's workings and communicate what's going on by radio.

According to Kurzweil, the result will be the deepest possible connection between the computer realm and perception, the ultimate virtual reality that incorporates not only the five senses but also centers of the brain that express humor, ecstasy or other feelings. These tiny "nanobots" will be able to "suppress the signals from our real senses, replacing them with signals of simulated (information). That'll be the nature of the World Wide Web in 2035," Kurzweil said.

Not only that, but cyber-enabled brains will be able to communicate directly so people can hold virtual conferences or play recordings of each others' experiences, he predicted.

Uh if a person's neuron's could be suppressed from external stimuli and replace them with signals of simulated information, you'd basically have the Matrix

Is that the kind of future we want?


INRM

 

[Seismosaurus]

Uh if a person's neuron's could be suppressed from external stimuli and replace them with signals of simulated information, you'd basically have the Matrix

Is that the kind of future we want?

Live within a virtual reality which you can redefine as you wish?

I imagine most people would want that more than just about anything.

 

[Beerina]

All you need to do is look at the internet for your answer. Already the internet contains vastly more information than any one person is capable of processing, so adding more information is unlikely to make any difference.

Reminds me of Asimov's Foundation series. With a galactic civilization with recorded scientific history of at least 30,000 years, stuff had been discovered, analyzed, and invented over and over again and forgotten. The scientists developed theories of "millenial depth search" where statistically, if you hadn't found your answer in the last thousand years or so, there was no point going any deeper.

It was a controversial bone of contention.



Personally, it'll probably be about another 100 years or so before there will be enough entertainment shows built up of mild quality that one could watch new shows all day for their entire life and still not "use it all up."

 

[rjh01]

<snip>
Personally, it'll probably be about another 100 years or so before there will be enough entertainment shows built up of mild quality that one could watch new shows all day for their entire life and still not "use it all up."

Can almost do that now. I belong to an on-line DVD hire shop that boasts it has 38,000 different movies on DVD for hire. That number is only going to go up. About the only reason to make anything that goes on DVD now is because technology changes. That includes movies and music.

Why buy a full price CD which contains music from a new band when you can buy a cheap CD which contains music from a top band made in the 1970s or 80s?

 

[Mark6]

Ray Kurzweil is a nut...

Really?

Here is what Kurzweil predicted in 1999 for 2009. Think how many of these things sounded nutty ten years ago:

1. Work groups are dispersed. People are successfully working together despite living in different places. (My job, among many others)

2. Average household has more than 100 computers -- that is, chips, -- most of which are embedded in appliances, entertainment and telephone systems, automobiles and even key chains. (Count all the colored lights in your house. And yes, USB on my keychain has a chip, and more memory than most computers in 1999)

3. Household robots have emerged but are not yet fully accepted. (Pretty good description of Roomba/Scooba)

4. Intelligent roads are in use, primarily for long-distance travel. They allow you to sit back and relax after your car's smart cruise control locks onto road's sensors. (Failed on this one)

5. Local roads though are still conventional. (grin)

6. Privacy has emerged as a major political issue. (Read all of this thread. Hmmm....)

7. There is a growing anti-technology neo-Luddite movement. (Yep. In fact, the person I am replying to is an example, at least as far as genetic engineering is concerned)

8. There is a continuing concern with an underclass being left behind by a lack of skill, although the size of this underclass appears to be stable, since most people seem to be keeping up. (This is just spookily accurate)

9. Most visual art -- especially performance art, photography an video -- are collaboration between human and their software. (Not so much performance art, but photography an video are definitely getting there)

10. Human musicians routinely jam with computer-generated musicians. (Partial fail. Happens, but very rarely)

11. Those who wish to create music no longer absolutely need the fine finger coordination of traditional pianists and guitarists. (True, but tools which make it possible are still expensive and not widespread)

12. There is a surge of interest in new "air" controllers in which you create music by moving your hands, feet and other body parts. (Wiiiii!!!)

13. Virtual reality is convincing in terms of what you see and hear, although transmitting sense of touch is still rocky. (Off by a few years. But is getting close)

14. In fact, creation of virtual reality environments is a form being addressed by artist. (Not yet)

15. Wars are decided by those who have the best and most secure computers. (Would have been true if wars were still fought between countries. Failure in predicting geopolitics, not technology)

16. Most conflicts are not between nations but between nations and terrorists. (Entirely true, although at odds with #15. Failure to fully imagine asymmetrical warfare)

17. The greatest threat to national security comes from bioengineered weapons. (Hard to say)

18. Cancer and heart disease mortality is being reduced by bioengineering. (Partial failure. It is being reduced, but mostly by other means)

19. There is serious speculation as to whether computers will ever be conscious. (In all fairness, there were already serious speculations on this topic in 1999)

If most of these points now seem to you "well, duh!", I repeat -- think of how things were in 1999, and how would all of them look to you then.

With this kind of record, I am inclined to take Kurzweil's predictions seriously.