Wednesday, May 18, 2011

The Borg Will Be Us!


Here is a list of seven technologies that we have now or will have in the near future that will transform humanity into something very Borg like... oh yes and here it comes....I get to say the words....Resistance Is Futile!

1: Social Media. We can now share huge amounts of information, instantly and over huge distances.

2: Super WiFi. Of course all that data is useless if you can not get to it easily, no matter where you are. In the testing stage now, Super WiFi can handle copious amounts of data, physical barriers are almost no hindrance and has a footprint of miles instead of feet.

3: Augmented Reality. No, not virtual reality but augmented (any of you see the animated series call A Circle of Children? It was a near future world where children picked up the fad of wearing augmented reality glasses that would show the real world but also augment that with virtual pets, info, computer interaction ect.) Information supplied to you akin to a heads up display.

4: Truly Transparent Displays. like the glasses I just mentioned. The trouble with augmented info now is it usually is on a device that distracts you. It will really come into its own when you can access it in real time.

5: Nanocomputers. All of this information, connection and displays are going to take a lot of computational power to operate. The "wearable" computer never caught on for obvious reasons. What the upcoming tech needs is powerful but small computers. A fully functional computer today can be shrunk to fit inside of a USB shell. It is conceivable at this size to have a hundred or so secreted about your person, all of them connected by an adhoc network. For all intents a small walking around super computer. Downsizing them further, several hundred to several thousand could be in everything you wear to the devices you carry, in whatever vehicle you choose to ride in, even to others around you. Everyone becomes a node in a super consciousness.

6: Actual Retinal Displays: This would really push things along. You wouldn't have to wear the screen, your retina IS the screen. You might only need to wear special contact lens that would transmit the video / augmented info straight onto your retina.

7: and of course Bionic limbs. This is so close it's not even funny. Any missing or damaged limb could be replaced with something stronger and faster than you can know.

Good or bad, a lot of this type of tech is already here in one shape or another. The rest will be along soon.

Thanks to Device for the great post. You can read the complete article here

15 comments:

Homer said...

Personally, I'm waiting for the day that the internet becomes self aware. Hello, SKYNET!!!!....lol!!!

Beam Me Up said...

what do ya think Homer...a t1000 to come a callin?

Homer said...

Well, I have already been assimilated. Some of us at work refer to the company I work for as the collective. Got a big sign outside my cube 'RESISTANCE IS FUTILE'!!

Beam Me Up said...

that is just wrong......

Anonymous said...

Hey, we are already the Borg, assimilating all we encounter. Just ask the Incas (if you can find any), the Mayans and the American Indians among others. Resistance was futile!
No need for additionally advanced technology, just more advanced than that which we encounter.
If there was life and a culture on the moon, we would have assimilated that as well.

JoshM said...

Of course the biggest obstacle to total Borgification of the human population will not be technological, but sociological. Right now our social media are splintered into so many ideological and special interest factions, our collective hive-mind is still a long way off.

Beam Me Up said...

Anon, great line there. "No need for additionally advanced technology, just more advanced than that which we encounter." Tell me there isn't a story buried in that line! I would say you are 100% dead on with that one. Even makes its own title! "That which we encounter...." Oh yes....there is something hiding in there....

Beam Me Up said...

Josh, don't you think that its mostly a matter of how fast they get data? Once everyone gets the same data at the same time.......

JoshM said...

Well that's sort of my point. Right now most people pick and choose the data that agree with their particular world view, and ignore the rest. So what will it take for everyone to accept all the same data?

I suppose we could look at it as a kind of ultra-darwinist war of ideals, in which a kind of neo-fascism rises to prominence. Those who blindly accept whatever information they're fed by their preferred media source are able to band together into an unstoppable unified force and ... damn, we are almost there, aren't we?

Beam Me Up said...

Yeah, they're called fox news viewers! lmao! Sorry, couldn't help myself....

John said...

I love this topic...

First off... Fasten your seat belts because our society is about to embark upon 1 wild ride. The time it'll take us to reach our fist peak will be very short... But the slope will be long and discomforting. The way I see it... One day we're going to wake up and there will be a new tech that will completely revolutionize our way of thinking and acting and only those in power will have the means to obtain it. So, with that in mind... Think India multiplied by God only knows. We'll have the ultimate cast system and everything else will be left out to pasture until some fine day. But as with all things... Things change. So, yeah... That's where I see our world heading... Into some techno war... If we're not already there.

Anonymous said...

BMU,
I think the ‘that which we encounter’ story has been told a bunch of times already.
I’ve been reading science fiction since 1960 when I found The Nets of Space by Emil Petja and got hooked on the thought that we are most definitely not alone and most probably not the most technological or powerful. I just finished reading The Forge of God and Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear. The story offers an answer to the question raised by Fermi’s Paradox: If we are not alone, where is everyone? Bear’s suggestion is that babies crying in the woods get eaten by the wolves. So the truly intelligent, the ones who survive, might be keeping quiet. Remember the opening scene of the movie Contact based on Carl Sagan’s book? We are carelessly noisy and unlike the inhabitants of Who Town, our shouts of ‘We Are Here!” might be heard by far less benign creatures than Horton.
As much as I’d like to know who’s out there, I’m a little scared too.
Which circles us back to the Borg, we were safe until they became aware of us.

Beam Me Up said...

Oh wow John you calling a caste system based on info haves and have nots? Wild!

Beam Me Up said...

Anon "Bear’s suggestion is that babies crying in the woods get eaten by the wolves. " mmmmmmmmmm now if that don't give you chills nothing will! I have been putting off reading the Bear book. Haven't read anything since Blood Music so it might be time. You ought to put together a review and I will use it on the program.

John said...

@Beam Me Up... Well, yeah that's what I see coming down the pike... A techno-caste system.

As with all things, in the beginning stages of production, the revenue is recouped through high prices which only the rich can afford... Think of any new "major"/"high production cost" tech within the last 100 yrs that was affordable within the first few years of production....

Well, say you have a drug that makes you smarter... Or some implant perhaps... That means that the gap between those with and without will increase exponentially because it will increase the "have's" ability to widen the gap. Because they will be smarter, they could potentially control the means of production within a very short period of time and thus cut off the supply to those with less means which in return would mean that you will have 2 classes... Those with and those without.

Economically speaking it would be in the first gen recipient's best interest to use this strategy if the drug/implant did in fact make a person smarter because that means that the money they used for the intellectual gain would be wasted once the "have nots" were able to afford the very same drug/implant... So it would be in there best interest to deny the lower classes the same advantage. If everyone's a genius then everyone is average...