Total Recall

The trends within technology adoptance are starting to map out a very interesting future possibility: The possibility to record life, TiVo (PVR technology) style. The technology to produce miniature video cameras and recording devices are not new. The way that we apply these are. The latest to be every new mobile phone that hits the market. We’ve gone AV mad. Take this camera away from the phone, put it on a broach, badge, tie-pin or a pair of glasses, add a bluetooth connection. Hook this up to a GPRS/WiFi network via your mobile phone and top it off with unlimited file storage and a search engine that can be invoked by voice. And there you have it. Life on the mini-screen.

Lost your keys? Simply by discussing your keys… “I’ve gone and lost my keys again…”, your mobile phone picks up the keyword “keys”, server-side, your personal search engine is analysing all of today’s files, matching today’s events by audio (keywords “keys”, or key-sounds “jingle-of-keys”), image (key-images “picture of keys”), data (such as contact details – not necessary in this example) or by ‘tag’ (such as RFID or Bluetooth). On matching results, a list of recently spoken keywords are displayed on your mobile phone. By selecting one of these words, lists of captioned images are displayed, along with a timestamp. Select the one most appropriate (or play all) and review where you last left your keys in colour and with sound.

Take this possibility and apply it to contact names, recalling details within a meeting, remembering a date or other details within a conversation, replaying a crash as it was witnessed, or showing your mates a beautiful bird you saw last night (an owl of course) and so on.

Increase the video quality and integrate screens in to the lens of your glasses or on a wrist watch, add 360° capabilities and your mind can simply turn to mush whilst the computer remembers everything for you.

Where Would We Be Today?

Fear of the unknown both intrigues and yet holds back the development of mankind. We are at a number of moral intersections with so many new technologies. Going forward has risks. Risks that we don’t fully understand or can even be sure of. We can speculate, but we can’t be sure. So what do we do?

When da Vinci first invented the flying machine to when the Wright brothers first flew one, do you think they considered the profound affects of their work? Do you think they timidly explored their ideas, or do you think they just did it? When the first seed was first sewn, when the first doctor made his first incision, or when the first injection was first administered… do you think any of these happened with a full understanding of their actions? Mankind has developed from taking risks we don’t fully understand, and at every set-back we’ve improved our understanding and moved forward again. Were we creating irreparable damage, were we furthering mankind?

When Babbage set about inventing the first computer, I somehow doubt he was too worried about potential risks. Once the first valve-operated computer was built, the Americans put it to work to predict the trajectory of a bullet: to build a better weapon, to be a better killer. Today’s computers help us to work out from the wound of a slained victim the trajectory of that bullet: to capture their killer, to build a better defence. A double edged sword full of risk and potential yet we still harness the power of the computer and move forward for the benefit of mankind. The same cannot be said about all technologies.

When NASA first set about exploring the moon we faced risks, not fully understanding them, we did it anyway. We landed on the moon. As long as the risks were contained, NASA kept going. Yet at the first ‘visible’ setback, ‘fear’ shot to the forefront of the public’s mind, leaving the progression of mankind in its wake. We now nervously send people in to space. We cautiously step out in to the new frontier. The space programme has in the last 25-years, only now started to regain ‘some’ momentum with the possibility of Mars being a rich resource for mankind. Our own moon, sitting upon our own doorstep, remains a vastly unexplored entity.

We have seen what can be achieved in less than 25 years. Where would we be today if the momentum of the space programme never died down? Imagine if we faced everything with intrigue and not in trepidation? Where would we be today? Dig up the sceptics of da Vinci’s flying machine and take them on a flight to anywhere in the world. Dig up our sceptics in 100-years from now and take them on a flight to the stars. Apply this to genetic science and nanotechnology. Where would we be today? Where would we be in 25 years?

The Do's & Don'ts of Backing-Up Your Brain

What is life? Is it existence? If so, then what is existence? Existence is a state of being real or a way of living. That’s the problem with words, without a lot of them tied together they are open to an individual’s own interpretation. For one thing, life has got to be about living; the avoidance of death.

I’ve always said that “I would be extremely pissed-off if I had to die, there’s so much I want to still do and see.” Yet I know that my body has a limited shelf-life. I’m not a big buyer of re-incarnation or an after-life, so it’s technology I’m counting on. Cloning sounds interesting, but does not necessarily meet my expectations as of yet. Having a body that matches my DNA is not as exciting as a mind that matches my memory.

I have thought about cryogenics. It does sound more promising that cloning, other than they have yet to defrost anyone. And when they do, a defrostee would have a lot to deal with. For starters they would have a lot of catching up to do between lives. Poor Walt, If he had been cryogenically frozen, as so often people have speculated, I wonder what he would think of Disneyland Resort Paris?

With what research has had to show in matching the way the brain and silicon chips work, it is likely that one day in the future we will be able to download our brains. Taking further steps could mean manipulating that data and uploading it back to our own brain or even a fresh one. Take Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s past blockbusters ‘Total Recall’ and ‘The 6th Day’ for inspiration. Unfortunately as these movie titles stem from Hollywood, they depict less of the good and more of the bad for such possibilities in technology.

Downloading could be an extremely cheap form of preserving our lives. After all, the body really doesn’t offer much other than a means to support the brain whilst we interact with our world. Sure, we can lop off and freeze only the head. The rest can go to medical research, organ transplants, etc. That does offer a space saving opportunity, but does mean that at some point we’ll be lopping off more heads in order to reattach them back to fresher bodies. All rather messy!

There’s a couple of ways we could use downloaded brains. One, we could fix damaged brains offline, a sort of defrag, uploading a better You; Or two, we could grow human blanks a-la-Repet (The 6th Day), uploading the brain to a fresh body. Although I’m not sure how quickly we would be able to match the body to our existing one, or why we would want to (unless you’re Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston). Better yet, we could pick a more ‘suitable’ body. Adding on to these possibilities, we could travel great distances at the speed of light: Broadband connection to the stars, or at least their planets. You could be uploaded to a blank at a base station millions of light-years away. Another possibility is to dispense with the body completely. Although to accept this one, I think that would need more jiggery-pokery with my brain than I’d care to consider.

Such possibilities would bring to the rise even more questions about ‘life’. And death. And even more profound questions if we didn’t ‘have’ to die, would we want to, and if we did, would we be allowed to?

Baby, Baby... Beep Me One More Time

So you're cruising down the street in your flashy new BMW. You have your elbow resting on the open window. MP3's blaring. You notice an absolute honey strutting her stuff. You let your designer rays drop slowly down your nose to get an unfettered good look. With casual grace, your hand pushes on the centre of the steering wheel. The babe swiftly turns startled by your 'Missy Elliot' horn-tone.

What? You read correctly. The next thing to sustain the new $3-billion mobile download industry could quite well be 'horn-tones'.

Sun are still beaming over their success in enabling 350-million mobile phones with their client-side application solution 'Java'. Microsoft are in awe for once. But that won't last long. Shortly after Sun and BMW announced an alliance, so did Microsoft and Fiat. Yes. Fiat! Something tells me that the alliances may have been better suited the other way around, but hey! You do what you can with what you've got.

It's no news that on-board computers have been proliferating our dashboards for quite some time now. The only difference now is that it will be more closely coupled with other 'cant-live-without' gadgets, such as our smartphone.

So what can we expect from these interesting alliances? Probablly nothing more than gimmickry and media hype in the beginning. Using your smartphone as a means to unlock your car, start your car, play MP3's through your audio-system, act as your GPS, feed games and movies through to the consoles in the back seats. Oh, and allowing you to download horn-tones (shudder).

That's the beginning of course. Where will it takes us to? Your smartphone's display could easily replace the dull analogous dashboards in the cars of the future. Size shouldn't be a problem. Displays are getting smarter, thinner and flexible'. 3D/holography, foldable or rollable and even screens that project (maybe in fighter-pilot heads-up mode). You may even be able to chat with your smartphone, telling your car where to go (nicely), sit back and let it all happen, allowing your car/smartphone combo to dodge bouncing balls and small children, stopping at traffic-lights and slowing down for speed-cameras.

All very exciting. Though vanity is making me a supporter of the Sun/BMW alliance over Fiat! But who knows. I'm sure all the car manufacturers will follow suit, kicking themselves for not sending bigger fruit baskets to the Gates'es residence. And of course, the DVLA will no doubt be curious to know how many accidents will be averted (or caused) by downloadable horn-tones (insert Sideshow Bob style 'Uruhhh' here).

I am personally interested to see what it'll be like when Microsoft Autopilot blue-screens whilst hurtling down the motorway at 90MPH.

Death Bill for DVD's

Bill Gates, Microsoft Founder and Chief Software Architect, has predicted the end of DVD's within 10-years. Source: Yahoo! News - DVDs will be obsolete in 10 years: Bill Gates

This predication is already starting to shape itself in the increased subscriber base for broadband connectivity and the hunger for music and movie downloads. Alongside 3G, UMTS, Wi-Fi and MESH technologies, broadband, satellite and finally, the PVR (Personal Video Recorder) with the example of SKY+ and TiVo. Gates is not unfounded in his thinking. The need for portable storage is quite literally moments away from becoming obsolete.

Imagine the scenario: You get home from a hard day's graft. You slump into your favorite chair. Your wall replaces the picture of your kids playing on the beach with a menu. You muster-up the vocal power to form the letters, "T" and "V". The tone of your voice alone set's the system in to action. You are tired and stressed. You need some light humour. Quickly your entertainment system scours your personal profile and starts a download. The latest episode of Friends Re-United III begins to play. You didn't pick it. It's not necessarily 'on' a channel. It's not necessarily something that was recorded for you earlier today. TV companies have had to catch up with technology and viewer choice. Now you can watch what you want, when you want, how you want. And the technology will even do all that for you too. You just settle down and be entertained. You're going to enjoy it, the system knows that from constantly analysing your personal profile.

Whilst you settle down, your couch senses your heart rate dropping, and your laughter is being analysed. You leave the room for a moment to 'freshen' up. As you get up, Joey-Jr freezes in mid-sentence: "How you..." Your urine is analysed and on returning to your couch your program continues. "...doin'?" During this time, all your personal data is being analysed and finally a menu of movies, websites and games are being compiled for you (all of them owned by Microsoft).

We don't need to own everything. (Really we dont! - Matt) We don't need shelves and shelves of space to hoard technologically outdating storage mediums like CD's, DVD's, Games and the alike. There is not limit to what you have access to. If you want it and it's been crunched into a series of 1's and 0's, it's yours. The system even knows what you can afford, and what you feel comfortable in paying for your entertainment. You just relax. Your choice is waiting for you to refine:

You choose a movie and as you drift off to sleep, the sound and lights are dimmed and the air-conditioning altered. The movie is stopped. You can watch it another time, from the beginning or at the point that your eyes closed, probably on your mobile device on the way to work in the morning. As for now, night-night DVD, sleep tight little techie. It's all in the ether now.

Commonality: Can It Happen?

Technologists and the alike have one goal: To find the answer! One technologist may want to find the answer to making the smallest chip. Another may want to find the answer to restoring sight to the blind. Somewhere, someone is looking for the answer to something. One day someone will be looking for the answer to 'everything'. Converging all answers in to one. And when we know that answer, we'll want to make it available to 'everyone'.

Commonality: "The sharing of characteristics or qualities with other individuals." (Source: Encarta Dictionary).

In the age we are now, this ideal is uneconomical. We can't 'just' share everything with everyone. There is a need to fund research and development for each answer. After all, how else would we be able to secure jobs, pay bills and survive? But even now, consortiums of technologists share their knowledge. There interest is less to do with the ideal of 'everything available to everyone', and more to do with 'profit'.

Large consortiums of industry leaders, The Sony's of our world. Are devising ways to secure income for the future. By getting together an agreeing on a standard from which all the consortium members can benefit from they can be assured that their R&D (research and development) dollars are wisely spent. Whilst there may be the chance that technology far exceeds what is available in the high-street, if it upsets the carefully manipulated balance within the market place we would all suffer.

DVD (digital versatile disc). How many formats exist? To the common Joe: "one". To you and I (I will assume this is true as you are reading a technical article) there are many. DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-A and of course Sony would have to have one other SACD (not quite DVD, but an equal contender). There are single layer and dual layer discs. Blu-ray. And possibly others. In much the same contest that stood between VHS and Betamax, this is the best we can offer even though it took such consortiums to come up with these 'standards'.

At some point, these formats will all be exceeded by something smaller, faster, better and 'silver'. No doubt, whatever may replace the now humble CD or DVD will come in a variety of flavours, each hoping to win the VHS-Betamax-like war.

Time and time again this has happened, and not just in recording formats, but in everything with buttons. Similarities of such can be found in the food industry, cosmetics, music and so on. We cannot afford for their to be too much choice. Unless their is a mass market to feed (metaphorically), prices will become exorbitant, and the value in being the one to find the answer untenable. Consider all emerging technologies. If you are like me, I have to have the latest gadget before or on the day they are available to early adopters, you end up paying a premium. Consumables are sparse and it takes time before even more models are available. Eventually, the mass market can justify the value of the technology, albeit cheaper and often better than those bought by the likes of me (grumble).

Although it's naive to think that one day we'll have at Gattica-style society, where we represent clones of one another. Perfect in every way. Possessing the minimum required, but undoubtedly the best for everything we could ever imagine. We will always crave individuality. This itself will create an interesting future.

So what will happen? What will it be like when everyone is healthy, death does not become the end, we're able to pursue our dreams and do? What will existence be like when technology peeks, convergence is complete and we face commonality?