The old man is sitting on his porch by the side of the road. He likes this spot which is close enough for him to still discern the faces of the passing-by drivers but still far enough that he doesn’t feel the air blown by the speeding cars. Several cars have passed in both directions, but none caught his attention. Mostly single people running errands for professional reasons, one would guess. But finally, something interesting crosses his field of vision. Four people in an SUV driving under the speed limit. A family. Mom, dad, son, and daughter. Again, a guess, of course. Kind of a no brainer, though. When the only thing he can see is the back of the car, the old man says, “I like this one”. As he says this, his augmented reality prescription eyeglasses show four squares, one for each of the travelling family members. In each square there is a picture, the best picture The Window’s AI was able to take of each of the occupants from the high-speed video taken throughout the SUV’s traversal of its field of view. Each picture has a colored tag selected from a gradient going from grey to lime green. Grey to mean absence of interest and lime green the exact opposite. This is fully configurable, of course. “Show me the guy”, the old man says. He likes to start with the most boring looking option just to get it out of the way. He could simply skip over those, but he likes to make sure as it wouldn’t be the first time the AI had missed an assessment. And he’s retired, it is a hobby, so why not be thorough? Sadly, the AI wasn’t wrong, the guy is not interesting at all. Based on the pictures, the AI scoured the social networks for matches. This man has no relevant social media presence other than an outdated CV in one of the professional social media platforms. According to that, he’s in accounting. Nothing available on hobbies, political views, childhood stories. Not to diss on accountants, but in the absence of any other data points and personality traits, it’s hardly something to get excited about. Not much of a presence in other people’s pictures either. Which is odd, because jumping to his wife’s social media, she’s all over the place. Has pictures of everything she does, from PA meetings to the kids’ sports activities, the kids’ school results, updates on her nails and hair, vacations with friends. Everyone in her life seems to be in pictures except for her husband. The old man takes his own conclusions about that fact but moves on to more interesting things. As with many other people, the woman’s social presence serves the purpose of making it clear to everyone that her life is perfect. The perfect food, the most beautiful sceneries, fun and exciting holidays, and her children excel at everything, of course. She’s also outstandingly forthcoming in everything relating to her children. Their life is completely exposed for everyone to see. For the old man this is good, of course as it will provide hours of entertainment. But he also stops to wonder what the kids will think about the subject in a couple of years’ time. He spends the rest of the morning enjoying every little morsel the AI manages to gather about the family. He also watches the video of the family taken by the cameras, in real speed as well as slow motion. The Window also collected the sound in the interior of the vehicle using a laser microphone. This was an add-in, not part of the standard package. The Window was a present from his grandson who also installed and configured the whole rig. The best present he ever got.-- PauloSargaco, Sep 05 2021 José Saramago https://en.wikipedi.../Jos%C3%A9_SaramagoNot a fan of paragraphs. Or punctuation, for that matter. Doesn't seem to be a requirement for being awarded a Nobel. [PauloSargaco, Sep 06 2021] Continuous Random Activity Provider Continuous_20Random_20Activity_20Provider...jamming [Frankx, Sep 09 2021] Terrifying yet plausible [+]-- pocmloc, Sep 05 2021 aka "Stalker-Vision".-- neutrinos_shadow, Sep 05 2021 Given that privacy in general is receding in the rear-view mirror, anything that at least democratizes snooping is probably a good thing, on balance. And if you want to keep a bit of privacy, then posting an old accountant's resumé on LinkedIn, and no other material, seems quite effective in this case. [+]
However, paragraphs [-].-- pertinax, Sep 06 2021 Haven't read the idea, but imagine if you enlarged it and printed it out then stuck it on a long narrow window, it would greatly reduce the ability to see in or out. Is this the idea?-- xenzag, Sep 06 2021 \\ And if you want to keep a bit of privacy, then posting an old accountant's resumé on LinkedIn, and no other material, seems quite effective in this case. \\
And deceiving too. The guy is actually a George Smiley-type spy, hiding in plain sight. Not even his wife suspects.-- PauloSargaco, Sep 06 2021 \\ However, paragraphs [-] \\
That didn't prevent José Saramago from being awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature [link]. Not that I'm comparing myself to Saramago, just to be clear.-- PauloSargaco, Sep 06 2021 \\ Is this the idea? \\
Obviously.-- PauloSargaco, Sep 06 2021 People gonna be calling you "Vernon" pretty soon, so you know.-- blissmiss, Sep 06 2021 Paragraph breaks are good.-- Voice, Sep 06 2021 I, for one, keep my life off of social media to the best of my ability. I'm sure a shadow profile has been set up about me by Facebook and the like (the Facebook app happily compiles images of human faces in photos on the user's phone and sends them up to the mothership which uses facial recognition to correlate real-life social networks) but I ask people not to tag me and not to upload my pictures.
One day I'll be forced to have a social media presence. When that day comes I'll take about fifty pictures of me wearing a suit and performing business tasks in a generic office environment. I'll fill it in with generic and utterly useless phrases.-- Voice, Sep 06 2021 \\ People gonna be calling you "Vernon" pretty soon, so you know. \\
That would be a disservice to Vernon. He would probably feel offended.-- PauloSargaco, Sep 06 2021 C'mon, [Voice], think of that poor man sitting on his porch with nothing else to do. Where's your humanity!?-- PauloSargaco, Sep 06 2021 \\ Paragraph breaks are good. \\
That's clearly a WIBGI.-- PauloSargaco, Sep 06 2021 1 in 1 billion (4.66b number online/4.9 world household size) approx. Too rare, interesing would be.
The AI could build a fictional data set, or obfuscate the real data just enough to get above the level of just interesting.-- wjt, Sep 08 2021 [DrBob] Apr 19 2012 [link]: obfuscation, interesting annos. We have some well-informed people here at .5B-- Frankx, Sep 09 2021 // 1 in 1 billion (4.66b number online/4.9 world household size) approx. Too rare, interesing would be //
Really? Isn't that expectation of interesting excessively low?-- PauloSargaco, Sep 09 2021 Maybe you're just easily amused.-- pocmloc, Sep 09 2021 \\ Paragraph breaks are good. \\
That's clearly a WIBGI. — PauloSargaco, Sep 06 2021
Wait, is that some sort of NO-NO in your country?-- blissmiss, Sep 09 2021 No, definitely paragraphs are not a NO-NO in Portugal. I actually use them when I so feel inclined. I happened to not be feeling that particular inclination when I wrote that text and it never crossed my mind it would actually be a topic for conversation. Much less that it would hijack the discussion. I guess it simply isn't that interesting and I'll just have to live with that.-- PauloSargaco, Sep 10 2021 // Maybe you're just easily amused. //
Who knows?-- PauloSargaco, Sep 10 2021 random, halfbakery