Kerst in 2020 (Harrow technology report artikel)

[zrski]

Een lang verhaal maar grappig om te lezen:

 

The Future of Christmas, 2020-Style.

by Ian Pearson, BT Exact Technologies

ian.d.pearson@bt.com

 

[subheadings have been added.]

 

Christmas is a Christian festival - a time of celebration and merriment,

a time for sharing with family and friends, a time for giving and

receiving presents and a time of great excitement for millions of

children. It is unlikely that this will change. What will change is the

detail. Imagine Christmas in the far future. Many of the things in this

article will be ready by 2020, and certainly all of it will be feasible

by 2050 at the very latest.

 

Dinner.

 

You are having a turkey dinner, synthetic of course, as most people will

be vegetarians by 2020. We won't need to eat real turkeys any more,

we'll be able to synthesise turkey meat by using genetically modified

bacteria, much more humane. Basically, we will just put some ingredients

into a machine and out comes mass produced turkey at the other end.

Nanotechnology could do this too around then - biotech and nanotech may

use very similar techniques. We will understand the molecular processes

needed to convert raw materials into turkey sufficiently well to make a

good replica by then, with none of the ethical quibbles involved in

conventional turkey farming. The same goes for any other ingredients

that we need for the meal. For a change, Dad has put the meal together

instead of the household robot, just for old time's sake. He did have

some assistance from the various information systems, giving him real

time instructions and monitoring the cooking to make sure all goes well.

 

 

 

Reaching Out and Touching.

 

The kitchen walls are screen lined, and to give a more traditional

Christmassy feel, the displays now make the kitchen look like a setting

from a Dickens novel. The kids' grandparents are there too, on the

screen, with similar screens in their own houses. Even though they live

on a different continent, they can all virtually share the same table

for the dinner, just as lifelike as if they were all together. The

traditional family arguments caused by seeing too much of each other

over Christmas are missing though. With telepresence, you see just

enough of your family. Tomorrow will be a new day.

 

 

 

A Doll's Life (Really!)

 

The kids have a great time with their presents after dinner while mum

and dad try to have a nap. The girl got a Furby for Christmas, one of

the latest genetic engineering fashions. They have cute personalities,

never show aggression, and are easy to look after, the ideal toy for a

five-year old. It is already getting on well with the red and yellow

striped cat they bought last year. She also got a new Barbie doll. It

walks around, behaves just like a miniature human being, with all the

intelligence and abilities of a human blonde. She is already spending

half her time chatting to Ken from next door on her doll's-house

video-wall. Her invention was something of a headache for the ethics

committees, who insisted on various rules that the manufacturers had to

conform to. Barbie thus sees being a doll as her role in life, has no

pain receptors, strictly limited emotional capability, and has her mind

continuously backed up on the network so that she can be repaired in

case of abuse. Her 5-year-old owner can watch the world through Barbie's

video camera eyes in a virtual environment, so the toy overlaps both the

physical and cyberspace worlds. She and her friends have orchestrated an

entire virtual soap, with their dolls all having complex pseudo-social

lives that involve other dolls, software entities, and real people. Few

of the parents understand what their kids are up to, they are from a

much simpler age when dolls were dolls and people were people.

 

 

 

NBIC And 'The Interface.'

 

She can interact with the entire smart environment in the street through

her arm interface. This uses the latest active skin technology. It

started years ago with the first video tattoos, but quickly progressed

to active make-up, skin based consumer electronics, and eventually nerve

links. Plastic keyboards are very passi; the combination of finger-top

tracking and inbuilt sensor pads now allows all the interface to be

either in the skin or floating in free space on a virtual controller.

When Barbie interacts with her dolls house, the girl can feel Barbie's

feelings via the haptic sensory link.

 

 

 

One Toy, To Bind Them All...

 

Her older brother got Micro-Mechano, the latest construction toy. This

is a fractal metal toy, made of cubes made of smaller cubes made of even

smaller cubes. They can all slide across each other, rearranging to make

any shape the boy can design, all fully dynamic of course. Various

chemical cartridges are included and a micro-assembler allows a wide

range of other materials to be fabricated. The Robodyne Nanotechnology

Corporation that makes it, is one of the largest on the planet. This

year their intelligence module is great! It is programmed to extract

whatever knowledge is necessary from the superhighway to assist in the

construction of almost anything.

 

The Matrix (the all-pervasive network intelligence) ensures nothing

illegal is constructed and supervises the actions of the resultant

constructions so that no-one can come to any harm. Its software is

confined in a secure virtual machine - earlier terrorist attempts to

crash the networks using peer to peer networks and evolution engines

made such precautions essential. Software can now only be run within

national boundaries of the country of fabrication, unless it has passed

strict interactive quarantine sessions.

 

The boy has already made two armies of tiny soldiers that are slugging

it out on the kitchen floor. One follows the strategy he worked out; the

other follows his friend's strategy. With all the miniature tanks,

planes and missile launchers, it looks very realistic. Just like his

sister, he can take part in these battles in a virtual environment.

 

He had an active skin implant a couple of years ago that replaced the

ancient active contact lenses his parents still use. Images are written

at high resolution straight onto his retina via corneal embedded

surface-emitting lasers and micromirrors. He can also record anything he

sees continuously on his memory belt, again through the corneal skin

implants. Next year he is hoping his parents will let him have the

full-body sensory collection onplants, with carbon nanotube connections

to his nervous system collecting and recording every sensation he feels,

24/7. His parents can't afford it yet.

 

 

 

Into New Realms.

 

Mum and Dad are now well rested, thanks to their noise cancellation and

alpha-wave induction sets. Mum tried out the interactive dreamer she

just got. This uses a combination of emotion detection and thought

recognition technology to figure out what she is dreaming, and then uses

active contact lenses and earphones to put images and sounds into this

setting. It is like a cross between virtual reality and lucid dreaming,

and is superbly good fun. Her dream knight has just rescued her on his

white charger. The main difference between this dreaming and the more

traditional variety is that the Knight that just rescued her is in fact

a guy from another country, who is also plugged in and dreaming away.

Network based telepathy is commonplace in many areas of life in 2050.

This dream interaction feels quite real, and is based on real human

minds, not synthetic, though they will probably never meet in reality.

Sadly, the charger was synthetic. These mental-space relationships are

much more fun than the old-fashioned cyberspace variety!

 

Dad just wants some good old-fashioned sleep.

 

 

 

Parties, The Easy Way.

 

When they wake up, it is time to get ready for the party. Almost all of

the organising has been done by the Matrix, so they ask it who is

coming, what time the food is arriving and when to expect the guests.

The public transportation systems have already scheduled their

collection. The pod will arrive any minute now. About the only matter

they have to worry about is what to wear.

 

The kids go out to their friends, Mum and Dad are quite happy that they

will be well supervised by the Matrix.

 

 

 

Parties, (And You!), The Way You Want It.

 

It's supposed to be an informal nostalgic do so Dad puts on his old

video T-shirt. But mum says he reminds her of Tinky Winky, so he settles

instead for the new suit made of reactive fabric. This continuously

monitors the transmissions from emotion badges and uses micro-actuators

to stimulate his skin accordingly. The old fashioned hug when someone

has come in the door takes rather too much effort but he still feels it

when one of the guests think a pleasant thought about him. It all helps

avoid the embarrassment of actually being seen playing with someone you

shouldn't. The emotion badges all talk to each other and pair people off

with others that are likely to be exciting companions for the evening,

making sure no-one is left out. The badges pick up thoughts quite

accurately most of the time. This pairing off is greatly enhanced by the

active lenses that are able to overlay the real world with synthetic

images, so that the person you have been paired with can look like

whatever you want them to look like.

 

Richer people with full active skin enhancement don't bother much with

real relationships any more, they live almost all the time in a totally

synthetic world where real relationships are too low quality to be worth

bothering with. When synthetic personalities are based on AI with six

figure IQs, and are available as cosmetic personality surgery to those

with enough money, society has become a two-tier affair, with the elite

inhabiting an enhanced world with better people, better bodies, better

friends, in better environments. There is no going back. Only ordinary

people still have to bother with the limitations of the physical world,

with all the mental hang-ups and mess in the un-enhanced human social

world.

 

 

 

NBIC + Fashion.

 

Mum has chosen a shimmering dress that constantly changes colour, making

beautifully designed patterns, but he doesn't dare suggest that she

resembles a cuttlefish. This provides a beautiful background for her new

active tattoo of a butterfly. She finishes her outfit with multimedia

jewellery that changes colour, shape and sound according to how she is

feeling. She puts on her make-up using the smart mirror that shows her a

digitally enhanced image of her face, showing her options until she

decides how she wants to look when finished. Having selected one, it

guides her through the make-up by numbers routine.

 

She had decided to use this makeup only because it was a nostalgia

party. Her usual makeup is fully self-organising and context sensitive.

Chips in the environment and on her person provide data on social

context, personality profile emotional state. Makeup uses the latest

nanosomes to create the correct appearance according to where she is,

who she is talking to, how she feels, and what image she is hoping to

present. It is all electronically controlled. All she has to do is apply

it, the manufacturers sort out the appearance remotely via the network.

 

Just like at dinner time, a few guests can only attend in video form.

Alongside them, a synthetic band plays on a synthetic stage that is all

just the video wallpaper, but the music is composed in real time by the

Matrix. The mixture has been chosen according to the tastes of the

people present, so that all of them like most of it, and it continuously

adapts to the mood throughout the party. The food was negotiated by the

guests' agents well in advance. It is all a bit like Woody Allen's

'Sleeper', and yes, the Orgasmatron is there too, directly stimulating

the septal area to create the ultimate pleasure.

 

 

 

Instant Replay. And To All A Goodnight.

 

The party goes well, everyone enjoys themselves, and their experiences

have all been recorded by the Matrix, ready for enhancing their next

interactive dream. Time for bed!

 

----- End of the Article -----

[Gast Kanban]

Echt heel grappig! Ik hoop dat ik in 2020 (dan ben ik 42) in ieder geval niet al 17 jaar eerste en tweede kerstdag bij familie zit maar met mijn gezinnetje op een tropisch eiland! 8)