User Submitted Blog Post: Future Compliant, March 29, 2008

Future Compliant, March 28, 2008
by Rick Dakan

If I were to name one area where the future and the present have clashed in really interesting and unpredictable ways, well, I couldn't name just one. That's sort of the thing about the future, it's always surprising us - or at least me. But one area I pay a lot of attention to and which has a big impact on all of us is politics. There's the bad stuff, like hackable voting machines that leave no paper trail that piss me off. There's the other bad side, where politicians bow to industry pressure to mess with things like Net Neutrality or try to censor the internet. And then there's the good stuff, first and foremost being (in my opinion) how much easier it has become to organize and communicate your political message. Nothing new there, lots of people have been saying that for years, but I wanted to point out one site in particular that came on line recently because I think it's worth checking out. The widely recognized problem with everyone having a voice is that it can sometimes be hard to figure out which voices are worth listening to. I actually don't think that's much of a problem compared to the enormous benefits, especially since it means people get judged by their individual merits and reputation rather than being fed to us by some large media conglomerate. Word of mouth becomes vital.

So here's the word of my mouth: Go check out Change Congress, a site started by Lawrence Lessig and Joe Trippi. Trippi was Howard Dean's campaign manager/internet guru back in 2004, and while I have some minor issues with him, he's been thinking about politics and the future for a long time. Not nearly as long as the other guy though. Lawrence Lessig is why I'm recommending the site and the cause. He's been on the forefront of the open intellectual property movement and copy right reform cause for years, and has now shifted his prodigious brain's focus to trying to help improve politics in the US by opening up the system and working against lobbyist money's stranglehold on the system. This is just a start of course, but it's a good start, and I encourage you to go check it out.

I've just gotten back from my first long trip where I used my Asus EeePC as my only computer, and I loved it. The fact that it's so light and small makes a world of difference when it comes both to lugging around my laptop bag and getting the thing out and actually using it within the small confines of a plane. I'm a big guy, and unless I'm in a seat with extra leg room for some reason, it's almost impossible for me to use a normal laptop in-flight, especially once the person in front of me reclines their seat. But none of that was a problem with the EeePC, so I'm now officially on board with the whole ultra-portable laptop movement. Now though, now I just want them smaller. And smaller! I want a display that's on glasses and a keyboard that rolls out or responds to my thoughts. We're not there yet, but there is MIU's HDPC, which looks pretty cool. Quoting the Engadget story, "All that tech allows the HDPC to function as a portable SatNav device, handheld gaming rig, cellphone, UMPC, PMP, eBook reader, digital camera, etc. Did we already tell you that it will cost less than $500?" With a purported 7 hour battery life (battery life being my only problem with my EeePC), and GPS options, this thing does almost everything. It would need some kind of larger keyboard attachment for me to do any real writing on it, but I imagine that's easy enough to find, or will be. I've seen prototypes of little roll-up keyboards. This is the next step towards my dream machine - one device for all my communication and computing needs. Plus it runs Linux. Who knows if this particular model will be the breakthrough product in this category. Probably not. But it's what's coming, and five years from now they'll be half the price and twice as useful and as common as cell phones are today. That, I'm looking forward to.

MIU's device seems like something Batman might have, and so does the other piece of tech that caught my eye recently - Nihon Uni's slash-proof shirt, woven from a material that's flexible like normal cloth but much stronger than the average piece of clothing. Now unfortunately the shirt is not actually stab proof, as original stories that floated around the Web made me believe, and there's a big difference between stab and slash proof. But it got me thinking about weapon resistant clothing. Would that catch on? If I could wear something that was just as comfortable and flexible as my normal clothing, but could also save me from knife attacks, would I pay the extra money? I think I would, at least once or twice. Now, I've never even been mugged or robbed at all and certainly haven't been in any knife fights. There's not a moment in my life that I can look back upon and say, "Wow, if only I'd had a knife-proof shirt, that would have gone different..." But still I kind of want one now. I'm not even sure why. Maybe it is the Batman factor - that personal armor goes with all the cool gadgets I'm also lusting after. I would hope it wouldn't make me more reckless, but I can also see some idiots deciding to test their new slash-proof shirt to the limit and see if it really does protect them. Have you seen that youtube video of the kid setting his own shirt on fire? People can be pretty stupid.

Finally here's a link that you can lose a few minutes or hours or days to. It's called flickrvision.com and it has a world map that pops up pictures in real time as they are added to people's Flickr accounts all over the planet. I find it really hypnotic to get these strange slices of random people's lives. Go ahead and check it out, and remember, that could be you up there sometime.