On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 2:21 PM, Chris Zell <[email protected]> wrote:
My God, military/prison robot applications signal a world rushing headlong > into a Terminator/Skynet situation. Ray Kurzweil seems to think an Age Of > Spiritual Machines awaits us but that looks as naïve as every other hope > that technology would save us from war and oppression. We are quickly heading into an interesting world, where there will be many unknown consequences. There could be some interesting sci-fi books written to explore them. Some possible developments include: - The possibility that anonymity will become effectively impossible. Even if a person thinks he's being anonymous, there will be a service you can buy, or possibly a free one, that will allow his online activity to be traced back to him/her. So everything one has ever written or posted on a site, or sent in an email, will be available there to people willing to pay the cost. People will learn that nothing they do is private and that their online reputation will be with them forever, including long after they've died. - The possibility that crime enforcement will become very efficient. Who needs jails if you can just put an ankle monitor around nonviolent offenders, and keep a record of their every movement. This would allow law enforcement to trace them back to scenes of known crimes. - Small swarms of police drones that will follow suspects from the scene of a crime in the making. Together with bulletproof inventory control for stores, people will have a much harder time getting away with petty theft. An interesting question in this context is how will this kind of technological change, and in a sense invasiveness, alter society and culture? Eric
