My story “Aspiration Value” (http://compellingsciencefiction.com/stories/aspirationvalue.html) shows virtual assistants (“assists”) giving users visual cues as they go about their daily lives, directing their attention according to what their algorithms calculate are the users’ best interests.
I don’t, at any point, talk about the hardware side of how that happens; it’s just there, because the interesting part is the effect of the technology, not the form of it.
My wife and I are making our way through Person of Interest on Netflix, and it’s struck me how the characters walk around in different parts of the city talking to each other just as a matter of course. That’s something that you couldn’t have put in a show set in the present just ten or so years ago, but now we accept it as a common convention – and it makes a huge difference to how stories unfold, and how the characters interact. How much more so if they could call up images of each other?
Via Lisa Cohen.
Originally shared by Marcel Gagne
Make no mistake. This is where we are headed with personal technology. The smartphone that is today an extension of so many of us, will quickly, in a few short years, transform us all into cyborgs. Whether you see that as the end of humanity, or the next step in our evolution, is a question I leave to you.
http://www.businessinsider.com/death-of-the-smartphone-and-what-comes-after-2017-3
