Prophecy 4
The Obvious
Society |
Prophecy
1
Personal Flight
Recorder (PFR)
Prophecy 2
Open
Source Hegemony
Prophecy 3
Personal GeoPositioning & Notification |
All the technical clues point to a transparent society that
collectively knows as much about its participants as did the citizens of
a 19th
century village.
The personal means for that transparency is the PFR with geopositioning.
The supporting
infrastructure will be the wireless mesh of repeating stations that we
the people will build without realizing that we were supposed to wait until
the telecoms got their act together.
The icing on the transparency cake will be the broad adoption
of Radio Frequency ID (RFID)
tags. These microscopic, essentially free passive transponders will be based
on unique IPv6 identifiers numerous enough to tag every item on earth.
The tech is being developed
for retailers but its significant effect will be that everything in the world
will be detectable by your cell phone-turned-PFR.
In an Obvious Society, each of us will have one or more devices capturing the
video stream moving past it and aware of the description and history of the
material objects it is near. This is a world in which it is absurd to consider
stealing a bike or snatching a purse. As noted previously,
all this mutual observation and knowledge makes current security monitoring
a small
and irrelevant part of the collective knowledge of society. Peer Brother
makes Big Brother irrelevant and kind of pitiful.
But those technologies describe a transparent society. What's
an Obvious Society?
It's one where it's obvious to we the participants how
to indicate our needs and receive rewards
for our energy, though there are billions of learning cycles between now
and then. We've all observed how most web sites suck but that a precious few
totally
nail it. When I stumble on that rare web site that "gets it", I'm
amazed and relieved that there are any at all. Slowly, the way to
make choices
obvious will prevail. The relentless march toward Open Source software will
hasten obviousness in all our choices, because the open source process nibbles
away at poor code until what's left is what we have agreed is correct.
It's stunning that the PFR is inevitable, imminent and destined to become
ubiquitous. Extended by geo-positioning, the wireless mesh and RFID awareness,
the PFR will expose what it sees happening around it and what physical items
it senses nearby, perhaps including people. It forces us to become what we
would have others believe us to be.
The Obviousness Revelation
Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.
—
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We live in the Age of Spin, where companies and governments
publish what we want to hear and then do whatever they intend to anyway.
Implicitly, they recognize right action, they just can't live with it.
When we can directly see what happens within view and earshot of each
of
us,
actions
merge with
how
the actors want
to appear
to others, and each of us gain some of the insight Emerson enjoyed. As
our motives become obvious, so do we. But there's another, equally important
form of obviousness—an individual's proper course of action.
People yearn for obviousness. It's why we sacrifice our
freedoms and personal choice to the yoke of self-serving patriarchs and
religious fundamentalism. It frees us from having to think for ourselves
enough to make
nuanced
choices.
- Why master
the subtleties of Evolution of the Species when we can rely on the Book
our parents relied on (or thought they should)?
- Why make our own choices
when
we can succumb to the seductive appeal of an
all-powerful
Father
like the one so few of
us
had?
- Why attempt to decipher the competing trajectories of constitutional guarantees,
politicians, generals and demagogues when we can mouth
platitudes wrapped in
flag and fatherland?
When obviousness is finally embedded into the socioeconomic
interface, we can each become masters of nuance rather than slaves of mystery.
Isn't
the aim of User Interface Design to allow us to master options more broad
and subtle than previously manageable?
The enabling technologies of the Obvious Society, while intriguing,
are irrelevant. What's critical is that it promises to free us from the smoke
we blow up each others' asses and, with a little bit of luck, make "isms" obsolete.
11:25:30 PM 
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