After yesterday’s post (thanks for all the great quality comments!) dealing with the nitty gritty of mobile problems facing us today, I just fancied a touch of more esoteric future gazing. I hope you find it find it interesting and vaguely original - I’m not aware of anyone else saying anything similar, but I could be wrong on this.
I’m interested in two trends emerging at the moment.
The first is that telepathy, enabled by our mobile “phones” is now looking a real possibility. In other words, phones will allow us to communicate thoughts (or not via what we currently understand as speech) to another person, whether the device is embedded into our bodies somehow or carried/worn.
Maybe true thought-based communication will happen, but in the short term, I think it’s going to be via a body action, such as jaw clenching or stroking the mobile device. But to someone who died as recently as 20 years ago, it would appear like telepathy, or the ability to transmit thoughts to someone non-verbally, whether near or far, far away.
The other fascinating trend that’s happening is a re-emergence of virtual reality as a real possibility. Games like the fabulous and addictive Second Life point the way here, but the technology is really still in its infancy.
VR was a big idea 20 years ago, but it’s taken time for the technology to catch up with the vision. In my view, this has the
potential to be the most addictive experience we’ve ever had available and could have a profound effect on society. After all, if I can live the life of a billionaire jetsetter, complete with the ability to chose to sleep with whoever I wanted, when I
wanted with no disease or danger, eat any meal anywhere, without getting fat AND meet as many virtual people as I wanted, why would I ever want to leave? I mean, screw The Matrix - if The Matrix was actually heaven in virtual reality, how many of us would have a problem with that?
Even more interesting is the idea of trying to distinguish between real life and virtual.
In a virtual world, I can leap off a building, if I feel so inclined. In the real world, I die or break my legs.
In a virtual world I can slap you if I disagree with you. In the real world I get slapped back.
As as the virtual world get more and more realistic, how will we know if we can slap with impunity or get slapped in return? As a society, we’ve already shown we have problems coping with cultural mores bought about by new technology, which are relatively simple - talking too loud or personally on a mobile, breaking off in the middle of a face-to-face conversation to respond to an incoming call or text message. How are we going to handle this more subtle, but fundamental shift in behaviour. Slap.
This is a bit of star gazing really, but the one thing it’s pointing to is that we ain’t seen nothing yet. In technology terms,
we’re still closer to the person who invented the wheel than where we’re going to end up, assuming we don’t destroy ourselves first.
Hey Russell,
Love your posts. However, we’re you smoking something or were you at this amazing party when you wrote this? way out there, man!
Just curious. Thanks.
P.S. If this was the future, I wouldn’t be using letters and words but thought transmission.
Actually, Russell’s right about thought transmission. Well, not quite, but there are already several peripherals out there that take input from users’ brainwaves. They do it well, too. They’re not ready for the retail market, but that’s just a matter of time. Here’s one such:
http://www.3pointd.com/20060622/a-mood-ring-for-3pointd-applications/
What about matter transfer then? It’s an IETF RFC, so it must work :)…
ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc1437.txt
See my “Gazing into the fuzzy future” note for a more conservative/short-term outlook.
1) In todays news … LONDON (Reuters) - A Paralyzed man using a new brain sensor has been able to move a computer cursor, open e-mail and control a robotic device simply by thinking about doing it, a team of scientists said on Wednesday. Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060712/tc_nm/science_brain_dc;_ylt=AhlsVjVwSS4m2dda.oy_62MRSLMF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4ZnRnZjhkBHNlYwMxNjk1
2) Thought-based communication is one thing, the “foot-in-mouth avoidance filter” is a must feature for me.
I wouldn’t bother doing anything with the brain…after all, we already use our mind to communicate — my fingers are typing specific words on the keyboard in response to electrical signals from my brain. It wouldn’t be too difficult to plug a wire into the nervous system so that the impulses affected some microchip. Say, in the arm, so there won’t be TOO much damage if something goes wrong. It would take a while to learn how to use it of course, just like it took a while to learn how to walk, talk and pick up chicks. But it’s doable. (Obviously the entrance into the central nervous system would have to be closer to the brain for someone who is paralysed).
James - never got the hang of picking up chicks myself, but I take your point
That’s kind of what I meant - a new learnable interface that would *look* like telepathy to our recent predecessors and essentially would therefore *be* telepathy.
I agree with Oops, that true mind transference would be hazardous, but if it does come to pass, I’m sure there will be a way of censoring those random thoughts, otherwise it’s totally unworkable. It would be like having thought-based Tourettes Syndrome!
Russell