Wouldn't it be fun to know which strangers you saw every day. How many of the cars you see every day - do you see every day? 10% ? 40% ? 80% ? how many of the people on the street have you seen before? 97% ? who knows...
Makng a device to 'recognise' car number-plates is today's technology, but making some kind of heads-up display is cumbersome. Perhaps when you get home you could see overlaid data.
Recognising people's faces is (luckily) tomorrows techology (hand-held anyway).
If we're going crazy (60 years time), having a video- camera-on the shoulder which knew all about the world and could help children learn by guiding and 'playing' with them ... would be good. (they could wander for miles, alone, learning about the world and be perfectly safe)
Augmented reality is pretty good fun. This idea requires constant video monitoring - which is slightly differnet.
@bigsleep - i agree. This is *like* 4 years away... And i'd like to think that the democratising power was greater than that the state could use to warp.
@MechE - i like the labelling idea. I'd like a more positive use than road-vendettas though!
@mouseposture - dementia is a disease, not an inevitable product of age!
@coprocephalous - near giggle
@misterQed - i think it's lack of CPU power. If it's on your desktop but not your mobile (where it's infinitely more useful) that's because phones arn't powerful enough yet. I recon this stuff is going to hit the news perhaps by the end of the year, and certainly within 5. My idea is just one small (and crap) application for live video processing.
As a footnote, in 20-40 years i would have thought that CCTV would all be linked and 'watched' by computers. Your identity location (and mood) would constantly be known. You have access to this power with your mobile (wiki mobile / goggles is going to be phenomenal) And people's interest in people will ensure that the focus of the technology will be on other people. As a further footnote - this technology will be essential to monitor and control robots, making sure they are not malicious. Just as a percentage of the internet is malicious, so too will robots be.
Your job is to try and see the bright side of this technology before it is forced upon you.
Just think about how much knowledge facebook has about the whereabouts and activity of the human race... a bit like that. Super-friendly, but significantly powerful.-- nicholaswhitworth, Apr 02 2010 MyLifeBits at Microsoft Research http://research.mic...rojects/mylifebits/A device that tells you who you've seen before, among other things. [phoenix, Apr 06 2010] book - The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age http://press.prince...du/titles/8981.htmlHe thinks humans function better if we are able to be forgotten a bit. However, it aint gonna happen. I say we need to adjust laws and social expectations to meet The Truth About Ourselves. [nicholaswhitworth, Apr 09 2010] odd, yet strangely compel... nope, still odd.-- FlyingToaster, Apr 02 2010 (lack of) privacy concerns.
interesting mental exercise, though.-- FlyingToaster, Apr 02 2010 That could be useful to find out who's stalking you.
And I like the idea of children having a robotic friend with them that could tell them about the world (complete with the sum of all human knowledge).-- lagomorph, Apr 02 2010 Does that spell the end of the duffernet?-- pertinax, Apr 03 2010 I heard of prototype worn video devices for Alzheimer suffers that are used to remind them of who people are. Unfortunately I was unable to find a link.-- Aristotle, Apr 03 2010 Something like this that allowed you to tag information and then repeat it to you would be useful.
I'm thinking specifically for cyclists, we could tag specific cars with "idiot" and then have it warn us when they're coming up behind us. For commuters who ride the same route at the same time regularly it could be a useful warning.-- MechE, Apr 03 2010 +-- Mustardface, Apr 03 2010 //video devices for Alzheimer sufferers// In the future, life extending treatments will raise the average lifespan to 250. However, we'll all be demented for the last hundred years or so. Prostheses like these will enable us to continue functioning, at least at a superficial level. About a third of humanity will be biological robots (or zombies, if you prefer) controlled by their prostheses. Society, government, the economy will all continue to function. Life will go on as before.-- mouseposture, Apr 03 2010 If I live until 250, how much longer will I be required to work?
The differnet is where everybody comes online to argue.-- RayfordSteele, Apr 03 2010 //If I live until 250, how much longer will I be required to work?// Undead voters will outnumber living ones. You'll be on the dole.-- mouseposture, Apr 03 2010 I'd recommend people read Millennium Man by Issac Asimov for an example of a classic handling of the issue of creeping protheses.-- Aristotle, Apr 06 2010 time to churn up the Apostrophe Shooter for you title... kind of ok idea...sometimes don't really want to know all that stuff.-- xandram, Apr 06 2010 //I heard of prototype worn video devices //If they were prototypes, you'd think they'd be all shiny and new, and not at all worn.I'll get me coat.-- coprocephalous, Apr 06 2010 //Recognising people's faces is (luckily) tomorrows techology (hand-held anyway). // Actually no. Google has facial recognition in Flicker to help you group your photos, they also have Google Googles on Android phone to web-search based on pictures. The only reason they don't put the two together, is that it would be REALLY creepy. So basically they turned that feature off. If we can ever work thru the creepiness factor and they turn it on, you could walk around with a small Bluetooth camera, a cell phone and an earpiece. Then every time you turned to someone, it could either tell you their name, save their picture for later research or scan the internet on the fly and tell you their name.
The license plate lookup also sounds like an add-on to Goggles, and has similar creepiness factor.-- MisterQED, Apr 06 2010 random, halfbakery