GLIMPSES OF THE FUTURE
A monthly digest of technologies, developments and trends that will shape our lives. (If you would prefer not to receive these digests, flip back 'NO THANKS' and you will be removed from the list).
Should Paedophiles Be Given Robotic Sex Dolls That Resemble Children?
When Isaac Asimov proposed his famous 'Laws of Robotics' in the 1960s he could not have foreseen that child-like animatronic sex dolls would one day pose a dilemma for society. That day is now here.
At the first European Robotics Symposium held in March 2006 in Palermo, Sicily, researchers asked whether robotic sex dolls resembling children should be outlawed by legislation. Although still in its infancy, the robotic sex doll market is already growing rapidly and, as in all other aspects of human affairs, sex is likely to be one of the major driving forces of the new industry.
Symposium attendees were asked to consider whether providing child-like robotic sex-dolls to paedophiles would be more likely to spare the suffering of human children or to stimulate and provoke increased criminal behaviour. Many other issues were raised at the conference, mostly about robotic security, including the safety of robotic war planes and automated battlefield warriors.
As Google Becomes More Intelligent, Is The Global Brain Finally Awakening?
Power users of Google will have noticed that the world's favourite search engine is becoming more intelligent - almost daily, it seems. This is occurring for several reasons.
1) The search engine fulfills over 300 million searches a day, and so is learning heuristically how best to hone its responses.
2). Google is now collecting each individual user's search history (unless you opt out) and this allows responses to be more tightly tailored to your needs. Sometimes it feels as if you are being second guessed.
3). Google has a vast database of human 'intentions' (as Google biographer John Battelle points out) which amounts to a database of current and past human expectations - i.e. a snapshot of the global zeitgeist (imagine the marketing value of that!).
4) Google has begun to archive 'historical' web information. Sites and pages which disappear from the web are now kept in Google 'memory' for posterity. The concepts of growing 'intuition' and growing 'memory' go a long way towards meeting AI researchers' definition of emergent intelligence. And to constant Google users, the engine does appear to be becoming smarter.
The concept of a 'global brain' has been around a long time. H.G. Wells first mooted the concept in 'World Brain' in 1938 and I used a quotation from his book to close my 2002 novel 'Emergence' (a story about independent intelligence emerging in the world's networks):
'In the evocation of what I have here called a World Brain… A World Brain which will replace our multitude of uncoordinated ganglia… In that, and that alone is there any clear hope of a really Competent Receiver for world affairs. We do not want dictators, we do not want oligarchic parties or class rule, we want a widespread world intelligence conscious of itself.' ('World Brain', H.G. Wells, 1938)
Diabetics Will Finally Be Able To Stop Injecting Insulin This Summer
Despite posting heavy caveats on its official product site, Pfizer is privately so confident that Exubera - its new insulin inhaler preparation developed in conjunction with Aventis - will receive final US regulatory approval this spring that it is already investing in a new plant and hiring staff to ramp up for mass production. The inhaler spray promises to do away with messy, time-consuming and painful intravenous injections for the majority of diabeties sufferers. Long, long needed considering the steady global increase in both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.
Who Is Collecting Intellectual Capital For Your Company?
The subject of 'intellectual capital' has been around for well over a decade (not to be confused with intellectual property such as patents and copyrights) but as corporate networks now extend to include integrated mobile devices, the time is fast approaching when companies will be able to capture the details of business practices and procedures electronically.
As a result it will be possible for companies to create a store of IC which can be valued in terms of what it would be worth to another organization intending to pursue similar processes or projects. At present, accountancy standards bodies have yet to approve mechanisms by which this new form of value can be shown on corporate balance sheets. However, regulatory bodies have been meeting in the USA and Europe to agree way of recording and valuing this new form of wealth. International approval is expected in 2007-8.
Die hard enthusiasts for discussion about Intellectual Capital can read more in a chapter from The New Future of Business, one of my works currently in progress.
GPS-Based Tour Guide Latest in Location-Based Services
Now a GPS-enabled audio device will travel the world with you and describe where you are and what you are seeing. Blending satellite signals, high-tech touring and old-fashioned storytelling, IntelliTours, of Montgomery, Alabama, creates audio and multimedia tours that are triggered by GPS navigation.
Sensing a "place," hand-held devices deliver narration, music, archival audio, sound effects — even video, photos and maps — that bring the location alive. History, landmarks and stories appear on the very spots where they were created. IntelliTours lets you wander, keeps track of your position, and awakens you at virtual markers with a rich guided tour - or, at least, that's what the manufacturer's claim.
In fact location-based services are still in their infancy. Even though the IntelliTours archive of available information is still very small and very limited in geographical terms, it is growing rapidly. Now we should expect to see such devices linked to Google's advertising base to supply ads and useful information about local services such as hotels, restaurants, car hire and leisure activities. Soon, we will never be lost and never be alone.
Mobile Phones To Keep Children and the Frail Elderly More Safe
For the last five years I have been predicting that further major growth in the mobile phone market will come as mobile phones add to their repertoire of functions to become location and safety devices for vulnerable members of society.
Now Wherifone of Redwood Shores, California, is offering GPS-enabled phones and wrist-devices which report the user's current location via a web site. This means that working parents can check that their children (or frail elderly relatives) are where they are supposed to be at all times.
As this technology develops (and becomes coupled with cellular positioning systems to off-set the disruptive signal-loss effects of interiors and high buildings) expect to see the monitoring of children and the frail elderly outsourced and automated. Alerts will be sounded automatically when wearers move outside of a specified 'safety zone' and monitoring services will alert those responsible for safety only when the borders of such safety zones are breached.
Other GPS-enabled phones and devices are available from Benefon, Mio Tech and iPaq (from HP).
p.s. My latest thriller, 'The Cloud' (set in 2063), is published this month by PanMacmillan.