The Future...Are we ready?

I was recently reading a couple of my techie news websites when I happened upon Microsoft’s view of the future. This little video depicted glasses that translated languages for you, seemingly transparent phones the size of business cards that kept track of your whole life, a child doing her homework ON the table, picking out recipes with family in different cities, touching the fridge to show the contents and touching the virtual rendition of the contents for recipe ideas, overall just any flat surface becoming a smart surface.

The only things it seemed to be missing were paper, real human interaction, and an explanation how to make everything secure. The people in the video seemed to keep all of their data with them at all times, which to me is incredibly dangerous. More than that, they could transfer data simply by sweeping there hand toward the location they wanted to move it.  What is to stop someone from swiping private data right into a database that could be used against you? I confidently believe that laws and protections evolve as we do, but it seems we are always chasing the latest fraud. Before we fully digitize ourselves, maybe we should begin working on protections…especially considering how long the legislative process takes. By the time it takes to agree on a national budget, your computer or phone is already exceedingly outdated.

Let’s move before the train smashes us, eh?

Categorize us into products?

I recently read an article a friend posted about her school. Apparently the school bought several iPad’s so that they could monitor who was going to what events. Afterwards, they would work out demographics to see what “kind of people” was going to each event. For some reason that really, really bothered me. I thought that it shouldn’t matter and that these were gathering unnecessary personal information about these students.

On the other hand, I could see how it could be sold that by doing this they will see that a disproportional amount of students is attending one event over another. Or maybe just keeping track of attendance in general will help to allocate funding. Still I can’t help but consider that this demographic profiling is causing us to focus on students as groups and classes of people instead of just people—just students.

What do you say? Am I up to my crazy thoughts again?

Self-destruct in 3-2-1

Twitter finally found a match? Vibe is a new application, similar to Twitter in that it allows you to send out mass messages, but different in that it provides anonymity. This is the tool to use to start a revolution. Vibes are completely anonymous and you can set the distance you want it set as well as the time of availability. So if you only want to send it to people within 15 meters from you, telling them that the cops are coming, you can send that and have it self-destruct itself within minutes.

I think this is a great tool for situations like those on Occupy Wall Street and other mini-revolutions where anonymity is desired so that a civil movement can occur without people getting hurt or protests escalating too far. What ways do you think Vibe could be used to improve communication locally and globally?

A sinister Attack on the Prime Minister

What is believed to be a Thailand native hacked into the Thailand Prime Minister's Twitter account and sent a series of tweets ending with "If she can't even protect her own Twitter account, how can she protect the country? Think about it." said the Sydney Morning Herald. Now the suspected hacker is looking at up to five years in prison and a fine equivalent to $3,200. Do you think this is fair?


I am slightly torn on this issue. For one, I think the Prime Minister should have done a better job protecting the Twitter account and that the hacker did the PM a service by exposing the vulnerability without causing major damage as he/she could have done. On the other hand, it is illegal to hack and the hacker knew he/she would be caught because it is such a public figure. What do you think? Better to attack and expose harmlessly or stay within legal boundaries and leave holes unfound?

If it leaves your brain does it leave your rights?

Today the US signed an anti-counterfeiting policy with Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea while Mexico, the European Union, and Switzerland did not, but said they would sign when it seemed "practical" for them. What does this mean for all of the file sharing over the internet? To me, not much. 


The policy is supposed to stop intellectual property theft, but we still have major players that have not signed this bill. The governments also have to try to implement this among the people. This is almost completely impossible with proxy browsers such as Tor or proxify. These proxies give the user an IP address from another part of the world and they can access whatever they would like. 


It also means something to me that the EU, Mexico, and Switzerland sat in on creating it, but do not find it "practical" to implement right now. Why? I don't know, but I can easily say that these countries can exploit this new agreement. It is not effective to go to battle agreeing to use only water guns if major players on the other sides bring their AK-47s. EVERYONE has to agree and then play by that agreement for no one to get hurt. 


http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/united-states-signs-acta/