Mind slaves

Imagine that in the very long term (2050 and beyond) technology will allow people to link their brains to the machine world, perhaps using nanotech implants connected to each synapse to relay brain activity to a high speed neural replica hosted by a computer. When this technology matures, people will do wonderful things such as using machine sensors as extensions to their own capabilities. They will use android bodies to move around and experience distant places and activities as if they were there in person.

But here's the scary part to all this

People may not be able to die completely. If their body is an irrelevance, and there are many restore points from which they can be recovered, friends, family, or even the state might keep them 'alive' as long as they are useful.

And depending on the law, they might even become a form of slave labour, their minds used for information processing or creativity whether they wish it or not. It has often truly been noted that there are worse fates than death.

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What will bookstores in the future look like?

Despite Amazon, people like to visit bookshops. On a recent class discussion on the future of Amazon, I had the thought of a new bookstore concept that blends Amazon and the traditional bookstore. I was thinking of creating a physical bookstore that sells paperbacks without stacking any of them on its shelves. The shelves will instead stack thousands of kindles with book titles on them. The kindles will look like physical books using 3D holography. When a customer picks a kindle book to browse, the titles of all the books next to it change to become more relevant to the content browsed.

Because there's no physical paper inventory, there are no sections. The customer types a keyword in a little screen and all the titles near him change. It's like browsing online in a physical space. When the customer decides which books to buy, he places the order, pays and laser printers at the back of the store print out the paperback. Books will be less expensive to buy and the experience of a visit to a physical location preserved. The second-hand bookstore will probably not be able to compete and die.

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Predict your future by controlling future outcomes?

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 29 March 2008 by member JackSparrow

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What if we had the ability to read other people's thoughts as soon as they are conceived? Wouldn't that be a great way to control our future? Say you asked someone to do something and while they take the time to answer with a yes or no, you can know what they're thinking, what holds them back or what excites them about your request! Wouldn't that kind of knowledge give you the power to shape any future outcome to your advantage?

If you could control the way a certain outcome will play out, isn't that a better alternative to our lack of ability as humans to predict the future? If being able to predict the future is impossible, is being able to control it or at least shape its direction the next best thing to it?

There are many movies and science-fiction scenarios out there in which people can either predict the future or know it in advance. I think it would be far more interesting to have a movie or a scenario where people can read other people's thoughts and adjust their behavior based on that information and not based on advance knowledge of the future.

If you had the ability to predict your future

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 28 February 2008 by member mrhogg

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Which events would you not want to be able to predict? While we often wish that we could predict what will happen in the future, I don't think that we would be happy if such wish was realized. There must be some things about our future we would not want to be able to foresee. What would these be?