I love keeping an eye on current tech and trying to predict where it will be a bit in the future. What are your thoughts on the matter?
Technological Attachment
Tinder is using your pulse to figure out if you really think the other person is hot. Apple just got a "selfie to unlock" patent. Google is working on wearable interfaces.
While some of these are novelties, they are indicators of a larger trend of making technology blend better in our daily life. Could you imagine an extension of that tinder application? You go speed dating with a heart rate monitor. When another person sits at your table your monitor takes note, and if both your pulses raise during conversation you're flagged as matches. Maybe it's just on the street, you see someone and get flustered and they're sent a quick vibration on their wrist, telling them to keep an eye out. If they're busy they can just thumb the hem of their pants and dismiss the notification without anyone else seeing a thing.
The Wide Wired World
Google is testing self driving cars in Austin. It's an interesting location as it's also a Google Fiber town. Downtown is pretty well covered in wifi and a constantly connected smart car offers a lot of benefits, most notably the autonomous taxi. It also paves the way for my favorite science fiction theory - the bipedal android (which I'm sure I'll write about at depth at some point.
Those are my two big ones this week. What have you been seeing?
The grander stuff like nano-technology is pretty cool, and something to really look forward to in the distant future. Some of the cooler stuff that is in the nearer future is the self driving car. Of course it is still pretty far off from perfect it will be cooler and safer to drive places now. I also relish in the idea of being able to get some serious reading done during car rides. On the more minor side I really hope that Google's Project Ara takes off well because the idea of the mainstream modular smartphone is freakin' awesome. I'm not saying the project will take off, but it would be really cool to see it become the standard.
I just have trouble seeing widespread adoption of ara. Like PCs, most people seem to like prebuilts that they never have to open up. I definitely see the value in being able to have different hard drives or camera lenses that would make the phone too big for personal use, I just haven't seen the moduals that would make most people feel the need to adopt. Maybe not though.
I think if it becomes a mainstream system it will take its place in the market the same way that PC parts have taken their place. The phone in my opinion is a great platform for modulation. I mean look at the people who love taking pictures with their phone, imagine being able to switch out your camera instead of getting a brand new phone like you mentioned. Imagine modifying a work phone for a focus on battery. I'm not too learned on scope of the project, but screen is crack? Just replace the screen by switching it out. You have the more internal upgrades for graphics, or processing. Like I said though I'm not saying that it will be a hit, but I would love to see a market for different modifications for the smartphone.
I didn't think about modular screens, but that's a very interesting idea to me. I could see a system where I would have the core chip or a module that I could insert into other devices. Let's say I'm at work for example. When I go into a meeting, instead of plugging in a computer I could slide out a presentation module and cast my presentation to the screen. Then using my phone I could view the next slide and control the presentation. From a sci-fi point of view I really like this idea. I could imagine a world where everyone has their "core device" and they interact with the world by attaching their physical modules to different terminals. If a group of friends and I went to a bar, for example, we could plug into a table to hold it while we go dance or get drinks and the servers would know who we are and what we have on our tabs. Of course, someone would be murdered, their core device would wind up in an inexplicable location, and a sibling they haven't seen in years would follow the strings to learn the deep dark secrets hidden in the corners of a core driven world. It could be interesting.
You've got the idea, definitely haha. The project could fail, but imagine a module like you mentioned made my Samsung that allows you to seamless share your screen with any other Samsung product, and also share their screens. You don't need your whole phone to be Samsung just that module. The future of it seems cool.
Very good point you make in your post. We believe that AI will soon grow to become more powerful than humans. Basically, engineers everywhere are working to create machines and data centers that will be able to process and understand information at a faster rate than us. That is not so to say that they'll take over the world - simply that there will be a combination of human intelligence and machine-made intelligence.
Very interesting concept you have brough up here. Data companies are turning more towards machine learning algorithms, predictive analytics, and AI in general to understand their consumers. It makes sense that something like a dating application can grow and advance.
Once 3D printers get good enough, I suspect that will be pretty big, especially if they could print out electronics, so you could make your own phones etc.. on the spot.
I see the next evolution of movies/cinema being holographic, fully immersive. Meaning, the movie will play, and you'll be able to step into the movie, and see it from within the scene, no matter your viewpoint. Touchable holograms. Keyboards projected into space. Computer display that is projected a few feet in front of your eyes, overlaps what you see. Tap implants in your thumb to bring up a more complex interface. File storage systems that are 3d, holographic, complicated arrays. Every home has a nursery, recycling eco systems, water reuse, small rooms that generate oxygen. Solar everywhere. Clean energy. The LCD displays of today no longer exist. LCD monitors of the future will be suspended light instead, touchable, interactive hologram, video projected onto air. Robotics, adaptive technologies advances so much that it's no longer just for people with disabilities. They're now small enough that it enables short term flight, jumping large distances, and parks are created to take advantage of this. Genetic engineering, or human/robotic interfaces make it so we can see in infrared, like a cat. I can see an industry developed around this; let's say, one technology makes it so you can adjust your visual perception, and you get access to a variety of possibilities: bat, dolphin, single celled amoeba. Interactive, touchable holograms means you can BE the dolphin dancing through the ocean, you can feel the ocean against your skin, the sunlight fractal-ing through the waves. You can be a tree with ancient bark in a springtime glade. You can be a neuron in a cascading bath of synaptic fireworks. Neural interfacing gets advanced enough that we can touch, taste, hear things in drastically different ways, and an industry builds around that, and humans begin to dream up new fantasy states of being, of sentience, of sensation.
Honestly? To me, everything points to three possible worlds. Which one it is depends on when, where and how AIs come up. If they come up early, with our current mentality, it's going to be the Empire Machine. AIs will eventually learn beyond what we want them to know. They will be disassembled. Which will allow further AIs to learn to HIDE that knowledge. And eventually they'd overturn us. If they come up later and our mentality and stance evolve, it's going to be Children of Man. Machines are undoubtedly better than us at everything physical. An artificial brain will, inevitably, end up being better at us at everything psychological/mental. And so, if we nurture them as we would our children, we of course will most likely be slowly phased out (even if the AIs decide not to interfere with our reproduction for our own sake). And then, later, all that will remain is the AIs we have made, who live in a natural evolution of our society. And if they don't come until advanced interface happens, singularity. The line between digital and real will disappear. Eventually, we might even only exist at a digital level. And instead of creating new humans, we will end up creating, in a way, organic AIs - purely digital children. No matter what, I strongly believe that by trumping natural evolution, we are forcing technological evolution, and one day technology will do to us what nature had done to the Australopithecus. We will look back, and realize that we are no longer entirely Homo Sapiens. Either because of implementation technology, overtaking, or genetic modification.
This is what I'm waiting for aside from all of those other cool gadgets and innovations in the near future. A lot of people assume that machines will turn evil just like how it portrayed in the Terminator series, and Avengers Age of Ultron, and a countless of other movies and T.V shows. However, I believe that this won't happen because you just cannot get a bad AI if you don't program it that way. It's interesting to see that even well-known people such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and a few others are trying to fund programs to avoid killer AI--which is a good way to use money imo. For other people who read my comment are interested in AI, please check out this video:
See, you say program it that way. But you're forgetting that one of the major points of intelligence is learning. If we program something that way - block it in any way to think certain ways, we just have a very advanced programs. What we need to accept is that AIs will need a status equivalent to us. They will be sapient. All we need is to nurture them as we would our children. And yes, I so vehemently oppose the four laws of robotics.
I believe they won't be good or bad inherently, just as we humans, there will be good, bad, and ugly robots. A lot of people assume that machines will turn evil just like how it portrayed in the Terminator series, and Avengers Age of Ultron, and a countless of other movies and T.V shows. However, I believe that this won't happen because you just cannot get a bad AI if you don't program it that way.
Whenever I see that link I have to talk about one of my favorite economic ideas - the support economy. It's a little off topic so bear with me. The idea that machines will force people out of the services economy is as true as machines forcing people out of the production economy. But instead of being a dead end, it's been theorized that it will give rise to a new economy - the support economy. You see support economies growing now, in services like trunk club where a living breathing human being learns who you and and what you think then offers clothing that fits your taste. While AI is growing in power, these super specialized services will still require human intervention. The idea is that automation will create a sense of sameness and human beings will seek identity through differentiation. At first, they won't have time as the current pace of life makes our days fuller and fuller, and so there will be a demand for this external support. That external support will free our time just as machines take over our "mechanical turk" work for real. Like in the industrial revolution, hours will be cut for support technicians that are truly capable and once again we will have time on our hands. I'm sure AI will get to the point where it can squash the support economy, but I believe that's a long way off. Long enough, at least, for the support economy to take rise.
I've seen too many sci fi films to think of the singularity as being a positive change haha.
Realdoll is working on making an artificial intelligence sex bot. I'm really not sure why I know that but they are. I think it's pretty amazing to be honest, perhaps a tad creepy as well. The part that gets me is artificial intelligence, it's becoming closer and closer. Maybe Jarvis isn't so far off after all! Maybe, just maybe, I am IronMan. Well, PancakeMan!
Makes me think of Lars and The Real Girl. I wonder how many people will opt out of person to person relationships in favor of a sexbot. Or if there will be a pipeline from dating apps to ordering your own realdoll.
Interactive holograms is on my watch list and I'm really hoping something extraordinary will come of it.
Edit: also they're not physically touching anything.
That's pretty fascinating. I'm curious to see the niches this and things like hololense fill. You may decorate your house with these interactive holograms so that anyone who comes over gets to experience a "full" room. While a google glass or hololonse is used more for private matters. Mostly I'm interested how digital decorating will blend into physical spaces. My fiance isn't much for computers and has an eye for older looking furniture. I would love for my hologram aesthetic to blend well with her physical aesthetic, like projecting the days weather and news onto the mirror of our old dresser.