I wrote earlier in the year about the reasons why I wasn’t going forward with Google Glass. Most of those reasons still apply but this week we took a major step forward. The next level in mobile connectivity speed has been reached. Trials for a 5G network. This may one day remove one of the major stumbling blocks to ubiquitous mobile communication.
Devices will be created to take advantage of this and to keep up, most carriers will have to have higher data transmission rates.
Yet even with this major milestone I am still hesitant about devices such as Google Glass. Privacy issues aside, and believe me that’s not a small thing, I still see Google Glass as a somewhat clunky and perhaps even a dead-end technology.
I believe that ultimately the technology will reach the point of not projecting something over a small screen but directly manipulating a user’s brain waves to augment reality. Nanotechnology would be introduced into the body and would manipulate the signals from the optic nerve to the brain to introduce “artifacts” into the field of vision. Basically you would gain the benefits of something like Google Glass but it would exist only in your imagination.
Besides the nanotechnology that would be injected into you or perhaps swallowed in a pill you would have some sort of transmitter/receiver implanted under the skin to handle all the internet traffic. Such devices do already exist and some have had the operation to have similar devices implanted already.
The nanotechnology could even go further and introduce sensors all around the body to monitor vital functions like heart beat, muscle tone, digestion, even blood chemistry.
Some of the first results in memory manipulation and memory decoding are being done at this moment and it may be possible to manipulate, record, or erase memories like a hard drive.
Now, is this a positive or a negative development? Like anything made or dreamed up by a human it has potential for both. We already bristle at the abuse of our privacy online. Inviting the technology inside of us may lead to even greater abuses. People releasing our medical records, our location, our thoughts is a seriously scary thing.
Once again the technology is outpacing the ethics. Really the only one that has even obliquely tackled this idea is William Gibson. We have some ideas but we don’t have much time. Technology keeps moving forward. Should we?
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