3 posts tagged “technology”
Today, I was asked about my thoughts on the new Apple iPhone 3G S.
I'm disappointed to not see an iPod Touch with a camera. Basically, I think the iPod Touch should be an iPhone without the phone option. Obviously this is a deliberate decision. I think a lot of people would decide to keep another phone, and supplement it with an iPod Touch.
Obviously the iPhone 3G S is a must have phone for me. I take pictures with the iPhone all the time, and having a higher resolution camera with auto-focus is a compelling improvement. And video will be great too, especially if I can upload it to flickr, and tweet it, just like I do with pictures using our FlickrTweet service. Video will make the extra memory in the phone important.
Not being able to tether with AT&T remains annoying as hell for the time I'm in the US and very mobile, but with limited Internet connectivity. Without tethering, I am confined to Wifi locations for serious work on my laptop (although thanks to Google, this covers all of Mountain View).
The compass in itself is rather boring (even for me with my navigation compass-using background - I just came back from a week sailing in Thailand, plotting our course all the way), but it will probably add some marginal benefit to navigation accuracy, directions and the intuitive user experience. It, along with voice, is probably designed to help kill the in-car GPS navigation system category.
I'm starting to think I need to have a mobile.me account even though it is priced very unfavourably. The features to find and/or wipe an iPhone seem compelling. Although perhaps not enough in themselves to justify the cost, it does start to tip the balance.
The extra speed should be nice. I find I wait ten or twenty seconds at times for the camera app to open.
Of course, most of this stuff I'll just get to use occasionally when I am in the US. Most of the time I will be confined to an iPhone that I can unlock. I will be most interested in seeing if an unlock for the iPhone 3G S becomes available. As an alternatie, it might even be worth a visit to Hong Kong to get a premium priced unlocked iPhone 3G S when they become available there.
Lie while you can, because technology may soon make lies untenable.
fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) will soon allow a scan on a person's brain, which can tell if they are lying. The areas of the brain related to emotion, conflict, and cognitive control, the amygdala, rostral cingulate, caudate, and thalamus, become highly active when lying, but remain relatively inactive when telling the truth. This difference can be measured during an fMRI brain scan and are visually evident in the resulting heat map of the brain.
As things stand right now, the technology is no doubt somewhat clumsy, hard to administer and expensive. But that will change in coming decades and generations.
Imagine this future, where fMRI declarations are as easy and cheap as an ATM transaction. The IRS just asks you to declare, under fMRI, that you've paid all the taxes you owe.
When there is a crime, the perpetrator is found easily by asking every suspect, under fMRI, if they did it. No one gets away with a crime for long if everyone is asked to declare annually, under fMRI, that they have not broken the law. A bit like filing one's annual tax return. Maybe it will just be added to the tax filing fMRI. "Did you declare all your income?" And by the way, "have you committed any crimes we don't know about?"
But forget past, this technology could allow societies to control the future through managing intentions. Individuals on probation could be regularly asked, under fMRI, "do you have any intention to commit a crime in the future?" If they reveal an intention they can be put back in jail.
With a future like this Americans must be especially happy to have the Fifth Amendment, protecting them from being asked to incriminate themselves.
The technology could change social and work interaction as well. Prospective employers could ask, "if we offered you less, would you still be willing to take this job?" "Did you do your best?" Partners could ask, "have you cheated on me?" "Do you love me?" "Do I look fat in this?"
Inevitably, this technology will not work on some people, either through disposition or intent. I can imagine Woody Allen types who are so neurotic, that they fail every questions, even when they are telling the truth. Others might deliberately game the system by always lying to some degree, so nothing can trusted as the truth. Always commit some petty crime that can't be pinned on you. Become devoutly Buddhist, kill an ant, and start to believe that is murder. Being a pathological lyer might become the ultimate social protest against The System.
See Also
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/lying.html.
NoLieMRI
Cephos
I currently plan to go to the first Barcamp in Cambodia at Phnom Penh on Saturday September 20th -- in less than three weeks. It should be a cool breakthrough event for a place where all free or intellectual thought was quite recently cause for immediate execution. A flickr stream of pictures is developing for the event using barcampphnompenh (the official tag). You can expect to see media posted elsewhere, such as youtube, using the same tag.
