Let's put ourselves 20 years into the future. Without arguing too much about specifics, I think we can all agree that we will have computers that are much more advanced and complex than they are now. In addition they will be a much larger part of our daily lives.

What are the dangers/ implications/ awesome things that will result from our reliance and use of technology that we don't understand? Presumably you will need apple or google or whomever to service/upgrade/maintain your retinal implants, right?

Or will you go linux style and be "open-source" so you know what technology is running inside your body?

I for one am not eager to patch a driver for my ears so they can run on linux ;)

If our consumption of media ultimately takes places directly on our eyes, in our ears, and potentially in our minds, the consumer electronics producers will likely find themselves orienting their business towards software and even more-so, biology.

Pixels, inches, and battery life will become specifications of the past. Instead, we’ll be more interested in comfort, ease of use, and how data is displayed in the most contextually relevant way possible.

Apple and Google are very publicly moving us forward in this direction. Smaller players are trying to leapfrog incumbents.

This should be fun. Let's call this internal stuff wetware, eh?

One thing I hope for is not necessarily open source, but standards-abiding wetware. I don't mind going to the dealer, but I don't want to worry about walking down the wrong street and having everything not display properly because they didn't pay their licensing fee. You think net neutrality is bad now? Imagine when the net's half your vision.

I think open standards are a safer assumption, and a safer bet - I'm pretty comfortable hacking stuff together, but bricking your ear canals or retinas? Bad day...

Should we think about what generations of technology we're talking about? Something like... Project Glass being gen. 1, Google contact lenses are 1.5, retina wetware is generation 2, and direct thought interface as generation 3.

Up until generation 2, I don't think things like pixels, inches, battery will fully go away. Best practices may come about, but I think there will be a lot of differentiation while things are slightly more external.

Coming back to the result of technology and media consumption, have y'all seen Black Mirror? It's a UK series. The third episode, 'The Entire History of You' is about an implant that records everything you see, which you can play back whenever, for whomever. Quite similar to Final Cut as well.

Science fiction writer Charles Stross has an interesting blog post about processor ubiquity. antipope.org

We're already experiencing the ubiquitous Internet with these tiny computers we carry in our pockets. It's going to get very interesting when the Internet of things becomes real.

Regarding cloud computing and storage space, I read these fascinating news today: newsfeed.time.com
I don't think we'll run out of space anytime soon. If climate change doesn't destroy us altogether, planet Earth will end up as a giant computer, as predicted by eminent futurist, Douglas Adams ;)

Thanks Zack for the link to Black Mirror, I'll certainly watch it. And thanks Andrew for inviting me into the conversation.

My main concern will be about security in such a future. This latest article about BCI goo.gl is highlighting a very interesting point. How to secure our valuable information in the future. Who will you trust? The impact of technology is beyond doubt a good one, but in the wrong hands it could be used as a very dangerous weapon also. Going on the retinal implants example what if hackers gain access to your update server and you won't be able to see if you paid an appropriate amount to an offshore account. It is much worse than having your hard drive encrypted.

I will go for the open source linux style technology and prefer to know what runs in my implants. Rebooting will not be a feasible option.

Even today and in the past it has only been a minority who understood the technology they were using. I wonder how many iron age dudes could reduce ore to metal or craft an axe? Some people will inevitably get more helpless without their technology, just like many people can't survive in the woods today.

But people always learn the stuff they need to. In the stone age pretty much everyone was good at finding food but this skill is largely lost. For a time many people knew how to take care of and ride horses. Now there are plenty of people who have at least some understanding of how information technology works.

You probably won't ever need to worry about patching your ear unless you work in that field.

Great point Andrew H.
Also, thanks Zach (again) for Black Mirror suggestion - when I have a free second I'll definitely check it out.

You guys ever see the anime Ghost In The Shell? One of my favorites, and in addition to being a great action/thriller movie, it makes you think about this stuff alot. In that future, everyone has cybernetic implants, raising questions about what it means to be human.

"Humanity has underestimated the consequences of computerization."

In 20 years I doubt we'll worry too much about implants, I think it will happen, just not that soon. Sure there will be a better way to access the internet and your data than a physical device, but there's just something to holding and manipulating something in your hand that is timeless. Augmented Reality via projection combined with more ubiquitous connected services are much more likely. But we run into a similar problem of what services do we buy into? Google Wallet and Square are services I am particularly interested in. Both offer a way to get around without a wallet, but which to go with? Will they become so popular that rather than carry my wallet I just avoid going to places that don't support my preferred payment method?

I just found out about open.sen.se the other day... their concept (from their site) is an "Internet of Everything where Humans, Nature, Machines, Objects, Environments, Information, Physical and Virtual spaces all mix up". They are providing a platform where all kinds of sensors can "post" to so you can aggregate data from the sensors that are really starting to become commodity items. I can envision this being used for all kinds of stuff. This kind of of real world -> digital world middleware is going to drive all kinds of innovation. 20 years from now, this will be considered antiquated... but technology like this could be the start of a really wired world.

I hope y'all enjoy Black Mirror as much as I did. It's the kind of filmmaking that makes you (well, me at least) want to create along with them.

Ghost in the Shell philosophy - nice. As per the quote attached, a couple things jump to mind. The first is subtle, simple, not necessarily widespread, but seeing groups of people at a pub/restaurant/whatever all on their phones. They might not be completely cut off, but I think it's fair to say that it isn't great for conversation, either. The other... well, watch this TED talk (I know hating on TED is in fashion, but it isn't all fluffy words).

Amir, worrying about which payment syndicate to join is VERY Jennifer Government (see book link above). Superb read by Max Barry. I hope that it becomes similar to the way credit cards work now - everybody takes visa and mastercard, but some people ignore AmEx or prefer Visa.

Scott, I am now signed up for an invite. Cheers!

I'm collecting so many links from this Branch =)

Here's my contribution to the popculture offering: the animated series of Ghost in the Shell, called Standalone Complex, goes even deeper in the subject of human/computer interaction than the films do. It's sometimes a little highbrow in a Chomsky way, but they predicted Anonymous years ago.

And this I've just started to watch. H+ is a WB web series, apparently about brain implants and augmented reality.

youtube.com

There are a few huge issues at play now that will impact the evolution of wearable computing/wetware. First, let's distinguish between therapeutic uses and enhancement uses of technologies (those for which a medical insurance system might presumably pay, and those which we want to use for quality of life purposes, entertainment and general betterment). We can hope that a regulatory system would attempt to dole out new medical technologies in some agreed-upon 'fair' manner, but the proliferation of corporate-owned monopolies so far doesn't bode well for the potential of living in an unbranded/open source future. It's not hard to imagine that wearable computer/wetware will play out as smartphones have so far...

...while the majority of people don't have access to them, the majority of my social groups use the same hardware and the same software, making for fairly frictionless experienced usability standards. This has huge implications for the normalization of socioeconomic inequality, perpetuated through access to tech (see Michael Sandel for more on this). Corporate monopolies, the military-industrial complex, etc are going to be involved. But, a la Donna Haraway, "The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential."

While that trend toward incumbent power manifest in technology has held pretty strong for some time and will continue to go on, I don't think you're giving enough credit to the maker movement and the eagerness of early adopters to uphold their own status quo.

Likewise, I think that there's a certain level of necessary evil in regulating the more wetware side of things - coming back to the idea of a computer-brain interface crashing... In the same way that you can't beta test a nuclear power station, wetware lends itself to strong safety regulation.

Zack - You could be right, although the maker movement still largely comes out of a privileged worldview. Without basic workers' rights and universal care, opting out of corporate structures isn't an option. The early adopters and their followers will remain a self-contained segment of our population.

Let's get explicit about the regulatory issues for a second. Are you talking about remote-kill capabilities? What else? Some foreshadowing we've seen already has to do with the classification of social media posts, emails, etc. as public speech, open to seizure for legal use. The more we upload - living in the cloud rather than maintaining truly private information stores - the more vulnerable we are to culpability.

Are wearable computing and wetware to be in the hands of the underprivileged in this scenario? Even (or perhaps, especially) if they are solutions to medical problems? We should avoid baking in problems from the outset, but also consider the shaping capacity that the initial market (which will likely have options) has on shaping the direction of this tech.

The specific regulatory issues I refer to concern proper (ethical, extensive, rigorous) trials before public distribution. Additionally, one would hope that legal mechanism favor the safety of the consumer over the protection of industry. I don't care so much about a warranty as tremendous punitive damages for a company whose wetware renders someone a vegetable.

The classic precautionist (bioconservative, if you want) argument is that wetware/wearable computing/future tech developments will only exacerbate existing resource gaps. Especially when it comes to biointegrated hardware, it's likely that at least at first, more expert installation, more like a medical procedure, will be necessary - Foxconn workers can't build computers into your brain. So this will look more like nanotech limbs, in terms of access and integration process.

We know from experience that regulation for consumer protection does not triumph over industry in this country (see: cellphones, cancer) but also that consumer demand drives innovation and distribution well before proper trials are enacted.

Come on Kara you gotta do a little better than "(see: cellphones, cancer)" ;) Can't just roll over on that one.
imgs.xkcd.com

I don't buy that the continuance of technology will necessarily exacerbate resource gaps. I'd point to how many cellphones there are in rural India or Africa as a testament to how new technology has a tendency to end up affordable and accessible. Sure, iPhone/Google Glass/ Google retinas may be only available to the western upper middle class at first, but so were cell phones and internet once upon a time.

I've got to agree with Andrew on the cell phone line. Now the tobacco industry (while not high technology, it's still technology, and certainly a dangerous product) is a scary example.

We might not figure out what negative impacts all these gadgets have right away. These things could eventually be vice items, slowly pushed into social unacceptability. The scary part will be the interim period after the honeymoon phase where negative impacts are sort of known, but tech. giants have enough resources to fight.

So there's a question: have we actually made enough progress to accept that some things are vices if we learn? And does 'the rest' have enough power to push back against industry when they're selling us particularly devastating vices?

Coming back to resource gaps in general, though, cell phones are a very special case. If you look at medicine, prostheses, hygiene products, transportation (public systems even more than cars), banking, agriculture, housing - the lot, really - there is a resource gap.

This is a widening gap only in the sense that specific things aren't getting into people's hands, though. As for actual resources (currency) getting to people, things are getting better. It's just not translating into empowering and innovations that increase quality of life.

The resource gap might be worth branching out over - what do y'all think?

Ha, I'm tempted to branch both resource gaps and the question of human tendencies towards vice (a lot of interesting articles have come out this year about habits and why we do things that are bad for us). I was being a little tongue in cheek about cellphone cancer; a less controversial example might have been BPA in everything and how scary endocrine disruptors are.

To go a different direction, though, we've been focusing mostly on how hardware might evolve to integrate physically. I'm also interested in how data and metadata standards might need to shift for a better contextual integration with the physical world and our environments.

That's an awesome point. I've only really considered what new hardware would do and not what better/more data analysis would enable/necessitate.

Remediation is all the buzz in some circles right now - integrating physical and digital spaces in interesting ways.

On a broader scale, the amount of social engineering made possible by data analysis is huge. Whether that's a good thing or not is up to your general outlook, I suppose.

One take on this is clinical diagnostic systems, especially IBMs 'Watson' (Deep Blue) computer. It's the same thing that won Jeopardy a couple years ago, and now it's getting loaded up with health knowledge, clinic details, and global metrics to help doctors make decisions about what to do for a patient.

Trouble now is getting necessary data in (the metrics, mostly), putting it into hospitals and helping doctors get it into their workflow.

Picking this back up after an intriguing lunchtime conversation, going to pivot it to a concrete question.

Would you guys get hardware physically implanted into you?
It's probably not THAT far off, right?

Rough estimate, @Zack's generation 2 (retinal implants doing google glass-esque stuff) is what, maybe 20 years away?

These are decisions most of us will have the privilege of making.
What do you think?

Two major factors here:

1) Affordability. Is this comparable to an iPhone? Macbook Air? Lasik?

2) Reversability: Definitely wouldn't want to be an early adopter. But then again, waiting until studies show possible negative effects a generation later means I'd never experience it.

Alright lets say that you're NOT an early adopter, so you have a chance to wait till people have used them for, meh, 3 years. After that, new models start coming out etc and they seem "really chill".

You can have them taken out.

Cost is something like buying a new high end computer cause you're paying for some surgery as well right. $2000-$3000 range. Things last for years and upgrades are much cheaper.

From your questions it sounds like you don't have any strong objections, neither do I, but my hunch is there are a bunch of people who would never consent to having machinery *implanted* in them.

Interesting specifics out today re: Google Glass...

Very cool - thanks for sharing!

To answer Andrew's question, I'd probably go for implanted software, assuming I can afford them - but Future Me is rich and famous, so that shouldn't be an issue.

The only thing I'd look into is rooting/jaibreaking. If I had to walk around with an always on piece of hardware, I'd want to make sure it's not doing something I don't want it to do.

Nice Kara!

As for Andrew's question, I'd actually early adopt (wave-one consumer, not alpha tester =0p ) so long as I was near a community of users at the time. I imagine there'd be huge network effects benefits at first, and very little useful content outside of major metro hubs.

I don't think I'd mind whether this think could be rooted - so long as there was an off 'switch' for more intimate moments... Wouldn't want to televise anything by accident, or even make someone uncomfortable by having a possibly ever-recording eye looking at them.