Kissmyrobot

Imagine…

It’s 10 years ago and you’re browsing the aisles of the public library, you pull out a book here and there to look at the cover, scan the description on the back and maybe even flip through it, and usually you put it back on the shelf. A few look useful, though, so you bring them back to a PC station, insert your floppy disk, and start working on your essay.

Later on, you go to the mall to check out some CDs, but you’re broke, so you put them back and save them for a rainy day. Then you wander down the street and check out some flyers pasted on the light posts for a concert that night, go to a pay phone to convince a friend to come, and later that night, you’re enjoying the show.

Imagine…

It’s today, and you’re browsing Amazon online for some new reading material. Each book you click on is recorded in your personal file, even if you don’t buy it. You do a bit of work on your article, checking facts and quotes online as needed. After a while, you get restless so you go to iTunes to download a few songs you’ve noted from your favorite online radio station.

You notice an advert for a band you like – they’re playing a show just out of town. You click on it to see if tickets are available, and then buy them online. Each page you’ve been to, each thing you’ve downloaded, each thing you’ve bought has been tracked in one way or another, by one company or another. Later that week when you’re walking with a friend to the show, you’re snapped by three different surveillance cameras.

But you sure needed the break since you were fired from your job – your constructive criticism of a co-worker on your personal web page was brought to the attention of your supervisor. You’ve since removed the content, but caching allows it to be found through search.

Imagine…

It’s 10 years in the future. Everything you read, write, look at and do is stored online. You just login to any terminal, anywhere, to access all digital content that is you.

Your insurance company knows you’ve been looking at articles on diabetes and has upped your rate by 200 per cent, even though it’s your friend who thinks she may have the disease. Your mortgage broker refuses to give you a better deal because she can see that you don’t monitor your finances regularly enough. She’s also wondering if you have diabetes. And why you’ve stopped shopping so often on Ebay.

The administration is monitoring every e-mail you write and every piece of content you come across ever since you wrote that article on the connection between the growth of opium trafficking and t*rrorism, especially because they can see how many people saw it – who, when, and from where.

The city’s blanket wireless internet service has been brought down by hackers who have infected thousands of online applications with malicious software. Countless residents – whose personal details and generated content have been exposed – are now vulnerable to extortion and identity theft. You’re hoping you’re not one of them, or you may have to cancel your trip to Portugal.

Most victims can’t leave the country until they agree to have a microchip implant that will locate them anywhere and track their every move. They may not, after all, be who they say they are. Every newborn is having the implant now anyway, thanks to new legislation passed since the latest attacks.

The security robot at the airport, armed with a lethal handgun, is scanning all IDs, retinas and thumb prints, just to be safe. Meanwhile, the latest war between our robot army is taking a mild hit by the mostly civilian army of Lalaland, who have lost some 50,000 soldiers so far.

OK. So that was a worst case scenario, right? Right? I hope so, too. I just couldn’t help pondering the differences that have happened in my lifetime, and so fast. Some call it progress, and I admit that there are conveniences I would find very difficult now to live without, but technological innovation for the sake of itself can’t be considered progress unless it advances the well being and worth of humankind.

I went to a human-computer interaction conference a couple of years ago and walked away bewildered. I couldn’t believe some of the amazing things that were being developed, but more than that, I couldn’t believe how little value it brought 90 percent of the world’s population. So much money is being spent on the innovation of trivial things, while millions of people are still starving to death, dying from AIDS or being flooded out of their make-shift homes.

But I know there is another story. There are people and companies building things to help humanity, and that is my project: to root them out and tell all my friends. Maybe even invest in one if I can.