Visions of The Future

[andrewducker]

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&amp;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&amp;showPlaylist=true&amp;from=shared" target="_new" title="Future Vision Montage">Video: Future Vision Montage</a>

Comments

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

Augmented reality: it's how you'll be watching porn 10 years from now.

[andrewducker]

You know how it's supposed to make it easier to give a talk if you imagine your audience is naked.

Soon you won't need to...

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

BTW have you ever read any of Ray Kurzweil's books? It's nice to see some of his predictions coming true (although a bit behind schedule)...

[andrewducker]

Nope - I've read interviews and the like though. Are the books worth reading in more detail?

And speaking of that kind of futurism - have you read Accelerando?

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

No I haven't, but I just read the wikipedia article and purchased a copy :-)

I read "Age of Spiritual Machines" a few years ago and it really impressed me at the time. The first half of the book is all research. In second half Kurzweil makes predictions for specific years...2009, 2029, 2059 and 2099 if I remember correctly. He also threads a conversation with a girl through those last chapters: through the years she progresses from being a regular person to becoming a swarm of nanotech with a shared conciousness.

However, the book's ten years old now and most of the predictions for 2009 are looking a bit hokey. Some them were pretty close though.

[andrewducker]

Sounds tempting.

Oh, and read the acknowledgement page when Accelerando gets to you :->

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

If you are mentioned in the acknowledgements it would have totally blown my mind if you hadn't hinted at it :-D

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

ooo I liked that. Shame the future is based entirely indoors; right now I'd really like someone to design a good mobile phone for work (oh you know, the ones with email and access to my Outlook) that doesn't scratch the minute you put it in your pocket, let alone survive being landed on when you drop it onto hard rocks in the middle of a stream.

[andrewducker]

Mine survived having water spilt on it the other day - but it wouldn't survive real punishment. I know there are laptops that will - but mobile phones really don't do that well, so far as I've seen.

Interesting idea though.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

I think the whole idea of modern technology is that it's office based and never has to go into the big bad world. I have a small field laptop that's ancient (I think it has windows 2000!), is compact and appears to be made of titanium, but the battery hardly lasts so I have to carry three with me.

My work mobile phone (a Nokia 6310), which is fairly useless functionality, but the best model of the ones I was offered for surviving reality. I want one that lets me get my emails, but I just don't think it would last five minutes outside.

(the rest of my field kit geekery: Garmin GPS, Spot Tracker, and an O2 Meter :> Actually, my garmin is f*cking awesome, last week everyone had flashy big GPS with OS map displays but couldn't get a signal and had to work out their locations with bearings; my little yellow thing with a monochrome display was getting 4m accuracy under total tree canopy. ha! ha! ha!)

[andrewducker]

You do get ruggedized mobile phones:
http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/7926/8950/Sonim-XP1-rugged-mobile-phone.phtml
But they aren't the latest/greatest models.

Same with laptops, I believe.