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The water alert will also mention that you would be better hydrated if you bought ElectroX, the electrolyte drink for serious thinkers. The to-do list will incl

by sfink 5y ago

The water alert will also mention that you would be better hydrated if you bought ElectroX, the electrolyte drink for serious thinkers. The to-do list will include an item to check out the latest release of Banging Cans, your favorite band. By allowing you to see your friend and his surroundings, you are implicitly allowing through images of the products that are visible, and therefore they will be added to your cloud targeted ad profile. Not to mention what you won't see. When you drive by protesters about a topic that makes you uncomfortable, your SuperFlow2030 app will blur out the words and images on their signs so they don't disturb you. The latest safety feature will use facial recognition to highlight anyone you don't know or is not typically in an area, so you can keep an eye on them. Coincidentally, a high percentage of those highlighted people will have a different skin color from you, which deep down in the weights of its classification model is still being used as a handy heuristic even though the developers tried to specifically exclude it. I, too, wonder what life would be like. Sadly, I don't have to wonder too much, because it appears that it would be like it is now, only more so.

nefitty 5y ago
I definitely had a naive little image in my mind of how things would be, but I see where you're coming from. I think one of the things that would push monetization techniques like the ones you mentioned would be if the hardware doesn't have enough compute power to process video, audio, etc. Having to be tethered to a cloud would make it more feasible to do those sorts of intrusive things, ie how Alexa picks up audio but Amazon servers process it. Although speculative cyberpunk is usually dystopic and oppressive, it fascinates me how much of those predictions have come through or are in the process of occurring. I think the major breaking point will be climate refugees moving toward cities, which could lead to megacities, which have notoriously been imagined as highly populated by an impoverished class of people. Thanks for the little dose of reality. I hope we can nudge our future by starting these sorts of conversations.

by sfink 5y ago

nefitty 5y ago

I definitely had a naive little image in my mind of how things would be, but I see where you're coming from. I think one of the things that would push monetization techniques like the ones you mentioned would be if the hardware doesn't have enough compute power to process video, audio, etc. Having to be tethered to a cloud would make it more feasible to do those sorts of intrusive things, ie how Alexa picks up audio but Amazon servers process it. Although speculative cyberpunk is usually dystopic and oppressive, it fascinates me how much of those predictions have come through or are in the process of occurring. I think the major breaking point will be climate refugees moving toward cities, which could lead to megacities, which have notoriously been imagined as highly populated by an impoverished class of people. Thanks for the little dose of reality. I hope we can nudge our future by starting these sorts of conversations.