When reading the theses from Everyware I can't help but get excited. I always wonder what technology will be like in 25 years. In my adult lifetime, I can't fathom what my children's children will experience, but what will our generation go through? When we see homevideos of our parents we think they look stupid, or movies from the 70's are so cheesey, not to mention the evolution of video games, health services, communication, transportation.
However, the implicaiton of the title Everyware is what I believe can be the problem. In our walls, clothes, business cards, coasters at a bar, dildos? I enjoy reading these theses out of the excitement of the possibilities, but Adam Greenfield momentarily points out the obvious with such advancements in "Theses 04." With all these new networked technologies, the "web" will be exponentially flooded with more information. With all the information, with all the possibilities, there is exponentially more room for harm. Even now with the "Personal" computer, how much do we dedicate to security already? We have firewalls, spyware programs, anti-virus, registery mechanics, more firewalls, spam-blocker, pop-blocker, website accountablity rankings, email scanners, more and more passwords. Despite the billions who would never dream of flooding another with spam, or spying, or sending a virus...there is another billion who think it's funny, or make it as a business. People who are constantly trying to rip someone off, that's what they feel is the only way for them to survive.
I can't wait for the exciting advancements. Yet how do we draw the line? How do we avoid "Minority Report", "The Island", or a Brave New World? With so much room for harm, we obsess over control.
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I too am a huge fan of technology and development and can’t help but to wonder what exactly lies in our future. It seems like it was a completely different world thirty years ago, what is our world going to be like by 2020? I believe that the rise of completely wireless networking will soon come and we might just take our first actual step into a “Minority Report” civilization. We do already have the technology, what is stopping us? Of course Taylor had it right with the huge security issue. There are billions of harmful possibilities that can happen to us just with us having only a portion of our lives on our computers, but if we did step into an “Everyware” scenario, then our entire life would be walking around with us everywhere we go. It would be like carrying a bag with all of your credit cards, social security card, drivers license, passwords, user names, medical history and hundreds of other important documents that you wouldn’t want any stranger to have. It seems as if we would just be putting our identity on the table asking for hackers to steal it. A huge step towards “Everyware” would require a quantum leap in virtual security.
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