You're a big Doctor Who fan, right? If I asked you what the world DALEK meant, you'd probably tell me that it is an anagram of KALED - the original name of their species. You'd be wrong. In 1965, it was clearly established by a canonical source, that the world DALEK stands for: Destroy without pity Attack without fear Live without conscience Eliminate without worry Kill, kill, kill, kill! I ain't even lying! WTAF? A few years ago, I picked up a copy of this - The DALEK World. A 1965…
Continue reading →
Only fools try to predict the future. You can read my predictions for 2023, or dig deep into my archives and rate me on how foolish I am. So here are my five predictions for 2024 AI Genocide It is obvious that Large Language Models are based on stolen material. I suspect that a lawsuit will determine that at least one of the major players has to delete all copies of their AI. They will refuse and claim that AGI / Sentience has been reached with their model (it hasn't) and that destroying it …
Continue reading →
Way back in 2011, I contributed to an article on The Next Web called "What will the Web be like in 20 years?". Foolishly, I missed the 10 year anniversary, but let's see how we're doing against those predictions a little over halfway through. My prediction for the Web? The same speed. Faster pipes & processors – more bloated markup & JS. Well... fuck! Bang on the money there. The web is faster than it was on dial-up. But I can't say that it's noticeably better since I got ADSL. Sure, it's …
Continue reading →
Only fools try to predict the future. You can read my earlier predictions, or dig deep into my archives and rate me on how foolish I am. I tend to look at technology through the lens of "what do I want to happen?" and then assume the worst. So, here goes! Federation Gets Simpler As I wrote about in The Social Pendulum we see a swing to extremes of culture. We've had a decade-or-so of big central social networks. Now we're swinging the other way. Will Twitter, Tumblr, or Flickr start using …
Continue reading →
This book is outstanding. It is a clear-eyed view of the future as it was seen from 20 years ago. I've never taken so many scribbled notes in the margins of a book. Many of the ideas are ahead of its time - and only a couple of clunkers which never made it. One thing to note is that it is written in the shadow of the terrorist attacks on New York City. There are around 50 mentions of 9/11 in the book - to the point where it feels like an obsession. Even the most mundane observation is tied…
Continue reading →
Exactly a decade ago, I asked "Why Can't Red Dwarf Predict The Future?" That is - sci-fi writers can imagine interstellar travel and sentient computers, but they think the future will still involve developing film photographs, library fines, and 3-pin electrical plugs. At the end of the post, I said: Here are my thoughts on some trivial aspects of our lives which - if put in a sci-fi film - would draw hoots of derision from an audience from the year 2022. Traffic jams. Attracting a …
Continue reading →
As the global demand for safer cars grew, there was a drive for cheaper and more accurate ways to deploy airbags. Thus, car manufacturers turned to MEMS based accelerometers and gyroscopes. Small, accurate, and fast. With increased production, comes increased manufacturing efficiency. So these sensors also became cheap to purchase for everyone. The street finds its own uses for things. In this case, phone manufacturers looking to differentiate their products started adding gyroscopes. Now…
Continue reading →
As part of my MSc, I fell down a research rabbit-hole of 1980s "Office Of THE FUTURE!!" articles. Ultimately, I couldn't find a way to include it in my research - so you're getting my cast offs. So, I present to you some choice predictions from "Technology and the office of the future" by B. W. Manley. Low cost computers (VDU) - yup! Data storage - the article talks about storing "the entire contents of the Encyclopaedia Britannica on one side of a disc — words and pictures". Digital n…
Continue reading →
It's always fun to look back at the predictions ancient man made about life in the future. 11 years ago today, Loïc Le Meur wrote 30 predictions for the future of Twitter (Video of the talk). This is a non-snarky look at those predictions. Not to ridicule his ideas, but to understand the errors made in order to help up make better predictions. 1. It will reach masses of people Yes! Perhaps not the whole world, but it is obvious a mass medium. 2. They won’t use
the same tools as we do …
Continue reading →
So, here are my mobile predictions for 2013. Although I work for Telefonica, this blog is personal and my day job doesn't involve any of the products or services listed here. I've deliberately left of the boring predictions. Yes, Android will get bigger. No, iPhone won't release a budget model, etc. BlackBerry 10 I want this to succeed. But I don't see it. I had a play with a demo device a few months ago. It was... adequate. I know it's hard to extrapolate from a prototype, but they've…
Continue reading →
