National Geographic's Disturbing Vision of the Future

[Quasar]

In this month's issue of National Geographic Kids, there is a massive article entitled "30 Cool Things in the Future." While many of them are harmless like nanobots to repair disease or robots to help people, some are alarming. Among them are these:

4. The world is safer for law-abiding citizens, thanks to Brain Fingerprinting (BF), a way to peek into a suspect's mind to verify if he was at the scene of a crime. How? Sort of like a lie detector test, but BF reads a person's involuntary response to a memory. It measures and records specific brain waves that are only active when a person has memories of an event or place. If those brain waves don't register, the person doesn't know about the crime. If memories of the crime do show up, the criminal is busted, and the streets are safer.

8. ... RFIDs embedded in toddlers' clothing help parents keep track of the kids...

16. ... Your smart house keeps track of what you need using RFIDs and sends that list to your e-mail, cell phone, or directly to the store. The store's smart shelves give reminders of needed items as you walk down the aisles. When you're done, your bill is instantly deducted from your e-bank account as you leave the store.

18. You don't have to eat food that you don't like just because it's good for you. As you reach for your favorite cookies, in a red package, an automated voice tells you that for your health, "You require the green-coded package." The store's smart shelf knows your genetic profile requirements because it scanned your personal RFID and reviewed your doctor's report on your health needs. You grab the green package of cookies, knowing they'll taste exactly like the ones in the red package but have the healthiest ingredients for your needs.

All of the items are listed matter-of-factly, and there is no intelligent discussion or debate on the ramifications of ANY of the technologies, let alone these little gems. It would appear that the current generation of children will be conditioned to accept a world of ZERO privacy, where even the sanctity of the mind is no longer respected. Regardless of whether or not some of the technologies presented will really be achieved, the suggestions alone are very disturbing.

I know I wouldn't want my children believing that it's a positive thing for the government to arrest people based on their thoughts.

[Grazza]

Quasar said:

I know I wouldn't want my children believing that it's a positive thing for the government to arrest people based on their thoughts.

That's not what it's saying though. It's talking about the memory of having committed a crime.

Of course it sounds like there would be scope for the technology involved to be abused, but that goes for more or less any new technology.

[St. Doom]

Don't take to much stock into it

50 some years ago they thout citys would have automated sidewalks

[Fredrik]

Grazza said:

That's not what it's saying though. It's talking about the memory of having committed a crime.

As we all know, human memory is extremely reliable.

[Doom-Child]

Shouldn't the Fifth Amendment prevent that from happening?

Oh wait, silly me. "Bill of Rights". Ha!

DC

[insertwackynamehere]

heh my brother gets that magazine and I read that article. It reminds me of the corny stuff from the 50s, or like some Jetson type future. Or like that future part of Disneyworld, the World Of Tommorow or whatever. The pictures looked like Final Fantasy mixed with Unreal Tournament 2004. It was fun to read but i doubt a lot of it will happen. Although some of the cityscapes did look awesome.

[Nightmare Doom]

Thats all Science Fiction Bullshit

here's the real vision of the future

http://www.optionality.net/mag/vision.html

[wildweasel]

Fredrik said:

As we all know, human memory is extremely reliable.

Witness statements are easily malleable. I learned this from my forensic science classes. One could easily be lead to believe that they saw Person X stabbing Person Y based on photographic evidence, when the picture was actually a photomanipulation of persons X and Y playing darts.

It's happened before, and it'll most certainly happen again.

[insertwackynamehere]

i made a thread a while back about how people should strengthen thier minds as they do thier bodies, because the human mind, while extremly powerful, even beyond our knowledge, is also weak unless trained.

[Scabbed Angel]

St. Doom said:

Don't take to much stock into it

50 some years ago they thout citys would have automated sidewalks

Parts of Las Vegas does.

[Linguica]

Quasar said:

8. ... RFIDs embedded in toddlers' clothing help parents keep track of the kids...

What's so bad about this? I wouldn't mind knowing where my kid was all the time.

A better question is, why the hell were you reading National Geographic Kids? Was it left on a table during a Yugioh tournament?

[Doom-Child]

He was looking for pictures of topless african women with plates the size of serving trays embedded in their lips.

DC

[Quast]

Linguica said:

What's so bad about this? I wouldn't mind knowing where my kid was all the time.

Quasar thinks these things will become mandatory for everyone to get.

[Dittohead]

That's a pretty funny article.

The things they tell kids today.

[Ralphis]

Linguica said:

A better question is, why the hell were you reading National Geographic Kids? Was it left on a table during a Yugioh tournament?

rofl

[Quasar]

While I shouldn't even dignify that with a response, my mom brings them home from the school where she works to give to a nephew-in-law. I happened to thumb through it today.

And yes, RFIDs have tremendous potential for abuse, especially for tracking and spying purposes. RFIDs are not science fiction, either. They already exist and are being used in some industrial applications.

[Bloodshedder]

Long-range RFID detector

[Doom-Child]

I gotta side with Quasar on this one. Even the possibility that technology will come around that could be twisted for the purposes of invading my privacy and denying me my rights scares the bejeezus out of me.

DC

[SirTimberWolf]

Hey Quasar,
good read man, *******ely appriciate it... If you're ever in my neighberhood check out rantradio.com They cover a lot of stuff like this... Highly reccomend...

-Think free, live free, be free...

[Janderson]

Um the only thing I find scary there aside from the Brain Reading are the nanomachines, what if they break and turn your arm into a block of metal?

[Fredrik]

Janderson said:

Um the only thing I find scary there aside from the Brain Reading are the nanomachines, what if they break and turn your arm into a block of metal?

This could only happen if they were radioactive or capable of sending out particles with energy similar to that used in large-scale particle accelerators, and either effect would be extraordinarily unlikely to give this result. The particular nuclear reactions that would be required for turning H, C, N and O into metals don't just happen by accident.

But there's a possiblity they could damage your cells, similar to regular viruses.

[Janderson]

Oh yea... well... there's Iron in the blood :P

[Fletcher`]

Janderson said:

Oh yea... well... there's Iron in the blood :P

Those nanobots could change the electromagnetic field in your body, forcing iron out of your body the hard way..

[VileSlay]

I think whats disturbing is how that article can be used to condition an entire generation in to thinking that those invasive conveniences are a good thing. I read last year that some middle and high schoolers believe that things like news media and internet should be controlled by the government. some don't know the whole bill of rights. some believe that flag burning is and always was illegal. this is all from conditioning via miseducation.

either way, most of that sounds like sci-fi stuff. really, where are the flying cars that were supposed to fill the skies by the year 2000? where is the moon colony?

oh yeah, as for nanites, theres alwaysthe grey goo theory?

[Xanthier]

all those things can and will happen, they just usually take a lot longer than they predict they will, a lot in some cases, cept computers they are advancing at breackneck pace for some reason.

[Sharessa]

St. Doom said:

50 some years ago they thout citys would have automated sidewalks

Tokyo has automated sidewalks.

[Regen]

The only ones conditioned in there present society are comfortable with it, or think they still have some kind of "freedom" or "rights" to some extent. so i wouldnt subscribe in what any institution would describe as our future. we certainly could not live in it. as in travelling in a time machine to the year "3005" how alien that existence would be to anyone living today. because they were not conditioned in/for it. and besides those 19th century illustrations of how the year 2000 would look like with those zeppelin crowded sky's kinda creeped me out.

[Ninja_of_DooM]

Heh, weren't we supposed to be living on the moon by now?

[Demon Hunter]

I'm stocking up on heavy military weapons in preperation for National Geographics vision of the future....

Anyway, the future even 50 years from mostlikely wouldn't be radicly different from today. We would still have cars that drive on paved roads and all that shit becuase no one wants to work towards making the world in fused with high technology like that. They think it would cost to much, but the rate at which any given government throws money at just about everything it strikes me as odd why we don't live in a more "futureistic" world yet.

[Quast]

Demon Hunter said:

no one wants to work towards making the world in fused with high technology

it strikes me as odd why we don't live in a more "futureistic" world yet.

Really? So, uh, where have you been living for the past 150 years?