Another bulletin from the near future:
“I don’t have a microchip in my head – yet,” says the man charged with transforming Google’s relations with the technology giant’s human users. But Scott Huffman does envisage a world in which Google microphones, embedded in the ceiling, listen to our conversations and interject verbal answers to whatever inquiry is posed.
Ceilings with ears. A dream come true.
It’s clear now that Google and Microsoft have to bury the hatchet, if only to collaborate on a system combining the Microsoft Nudge Bra with the Google Ambient Nag. So when the Nudge Bra picks up a stress-related eating urge, the Ambient Nag will be able to say something like, “Do you really want those Twizzlers?”
The voice from the ceiling is only the beginning. Eventually, Huffman suggests, the Ambient Nag will become indistinguishable from the voice of your conscience:
Google believes it can ultimately fulfil people’s data needs by sending results directly to microchips implanted into its user’s brains. … “If you think hard enough about certain words they can be picked up by sensors fairly easily. It’ll be interesting to see how that develops,” Mr Huffman said.
No one will ever get pudgy again.
What are data needs?
People want food love honour
What are data needs ? I have no data needs
“I don’t have a microchip in my head – yet.”
Did anybody else think of John Christopher’s Tripods when they read that?
Clearly, Google feels the real problem with the human race is its humanity.
“Clearly, Google feels the real problem with the human race is its humanity.”
Well put.
So do the exercise app and the Pizza Hut app have to compete in one of those instant algorithmic auctions for who gets the nudge when you’re jogging down the street?
“Clearly, Google feels the real problem with the human race is its humanity.”
Precisely.
What makes this attitude especially creepy is that these new enhancements to humanity are all announced as if no sensible person would mind being monitored or outright snooped upon 24/7 because we are all devoutly in pursuit of some kind of standardized, data driven perfection defined by Google.
I wonder where “data needs” would go on Maslow’s hierarchy?
I’m assuming Google has by now patented a gesture for asking questions of the invisible voice on high, consisting of placing your left and right hands together, palms touching flat, all fingers pointing upwards.