Geolocation

In yet another weird coincidence, right after I wrote about augmented reality and online integrity this one guy released a little tool called Creepy. Ok it's not such a great coincidence cause a lot of people are talking about these things but, whatever. This tool collects geolocation coords from posts in twitter and flickr. I'm thinking it could perhaps be enhanced to include at least facebook, gowalla and foursquare.

I've never been to Iceland. Really.

Some online blurbs blurbed about how frightening this tool was, so of course I had to try it out. So I grabbed the installer (creepy on github, it's available for linux and Windows, mac version in the works), showed it one of my dirty socks and said FIND!

And nothing came out. Of course. I (@Teodric) never added coords to a tweet.

So I tried with some other people. Politicians. Musicians. Actors. Tech journalists. Friends, even.  One had coords given, in one frickin tweet. Subject of that tweet? "what happens if I check the coords box?" Finally I tried a few Sweden democrats and some pornstars (Wonder if there's prejudice involved here?) but not even those were dumb enough (or cool enough, you choose) to add coords to their tweets.

I did find one tweeter who apparently adds coords to his tweets every now and then, I think to show off where he is today - @Magnusbetner, Swedish comedy guy.

As a scary illustration of how far social media and information technology already intrudes on our lives, I'd say Creepy fails. But give it a year or two and I'm certain it will show interesting things.

The page on github lists the various means the tool has of finding geolocation tags.

Reality, with a little help

Allright, augmented reality will be all over us shortly, and literally. Are you sure you want to do this?

You will be using technology that adds information layers to your senses in realtime and connected to information systems around the world. There are already existing products or prototypes that do most of these things:

Add information about a person. The information you can dig out on the net about a person is staggering. Your blog, facebook and tweets, your memberships, your jobs, anything media has published about you - it's all there. Your crimes and your achievements. Soon it may be displayed in a bubble over your head: little icons or flags for tax evasion or being a member of a club, the name tag's size varying depending on your number of friends and followers.

Add GPS-navigation overlays to guide you. Finding a street, a store, the nearest trash can, public toilet or first aid kit, it will all be very, very easy.

Translate text. In real time. More than one language on the restaurant menu may become quite rare. This is already here.

Bring features to your attention. Knowing what you usually ask for and what you clicked on yesterday, it's no biggie pinpointing related things in your environment. If you researched Big Ben last week, you probably wouldn't mind being reminded the first time it comes into view.

Recognize persons or features. You will know it when the guy with 50000 twitter followers comes into the restaurant. Conversely, if you have a lot of followers, they will find you when you step into a restaurant.

You will know your heart rate, blood pressure, the time and temperature, how many steps you've taken today, that you're about to catch a cold and that your bus is late. You will see how much weight you've put on since yesterday. You will know the fire alarm went off at your kids' school and that there's no milk in your fridge at home.

There will be skins. Choose '70s to have everybody look like... on second thought, that theme will doubtless be outlawed. There will be goth skins though. Your boss will wear a long black cape (she will think it's cool) and the secretary will be in a corset and crinoline (he will hate you), if you choose. And you can exchange their faces for one another, too, not a thing they can do about it. It's only what you see in front of your eyes, anyway. (From the commercially acknowledged "suitable" skins appearing, it will take approximately 48 hours for nude skins to appear. 72 hours later an Avatar theme comes out and 2 hours after that it's pulled by lawyers, replaced 5 hours later by a theme showing green skinned aliens. By then, the most popular themes will be Horde skins and some cultural equivalent of Justin Bieber)

Crowdsourced applications will alert you to the location of the nearest cop, so you can get help. Or so you can make sure nobody's watching.

Your glasses will show you on what shelf in the store that particular brand of canned beans are.

The coffee shop will have your perfect blend ready on the counter as you walk by, with you morning bagel next to it, no matter if you're an hour early or late, it will still be fresh.

You will be alerted that you are about to burn your chili.

None of this is news to you, but have you actually stopped to think about how much your world is about to change?

How will we defend our integrity against this? There will be no defense against a political opponent who easily spots you and walks up to punch you in the face. You and those around you will no doubt get it on film (and post it on Youtube 60 seconds later) but there will be no way to avoid it. If you've ever been spotted in the jersey of the team from the north side of town, watch out if you're going to the south side.

Sitting in a bar and double-blinking at a girl you like - will it increase her like-count, or will it send an invitation to share a dinner and movie? That's user customizable.

But you will never walk down the street again, and not be recognized. The advertisement will call out your name, and will know you bought condoms last week and lice schampoo the week before that.

It's Minority report, it's Robocop, it's a hell of a lot of things. Not all of it is good and a lot of it will take you by surprise.

Two, no, three little things that happened not so long ago

First, anyone who missed theBloggess' heroic, fantastic holiday gift drive, check this out and think to yourself, next year I'll do something like that. Here's an article about it in the Washington Post. I also consider her daily bloggings to be among the best there is on the net but mileage may vary.

Second, another kind of serious entry in the media flow: an open letter in response to the statements by Michael Moore. Lashing out is more fun than waiting for things to run their course, and it gives less press. That's not a very good starting point for deciding what's right or wrong, though.

Third, if you're the tech type, you didn't miss this, but maybe there's still someone around who would be as fascinated, awestruck by this as I was and who hasn't seen it yet - so here's that babel fish iPhone app.



Freakin' awesome.

I present to you: The Future

In interweb parley, the future is often examplified with flying cars. It's like the litmus test for reality being the future or not. No flying cars, future not yet here.

I'd like to offer something that's very real and which exists right now and which is almost as cool as flying cars. Not quite, but almost. One of the recurring conversation jokes for years has been "e-something". E-exercize, just download it and get a workout without moving your butt. The E-stuff is even funny for people with very modest technology footprint, like my mom, who still finds the e-wine (USB wine tap) ad hilarious.

Almost like e-candy, a company that operates vending machines in the Stockholm metro has hooked their machines to the necessary networks, with the result that you can actually message the machine on the platform, from your phone, and get a drink or chocolate bar.

I'm sure similar things are happening all over. I read about the MIT coffee pot in the Hacker's dictionary and I don't think Stockholm is that exceptional. My point is simply this: Carrying a communication device in your pocket that lets you not only communicate with other people's similar devices but also to interact with various other devices around you to the point of making a purchase and getting a snack - that's the science fiction I grew up with. That means my future is here.

I stop to look at those machines almost every time I pass one. It's kinda distracting.