Re: Re: Wear-Hard Digest, Vol 9, Issue 5

From Wear-Hard Mailing list Archive (WH) Maintained by R. Paul McCarty

 wrote:
> So, here's my next question: (I'm playing devil's advocate, here)
> What's the intrinsic value of ubiquitous computing? What good will it do to
> society? Or, better put and in order to show the selfish reason behind my
> question, what will it do for me? 

Uh, look around you; Cell phones, texting/IMing, GPS units in cars, or 
handheld if you're into geo caching or knowing how to get from point A 
to point B when on foot, location based information (is this reseraunt 
I'm standing in front of any good? Look up reviews for it), language 
(both spoken and written) translators deployed in the battlefield (or 
even for tourists soon), improved communication with friends, personal 
safety (biomonitoring), an accurate record of your actions (or others), 
and on and on. I'm sure everyone on this list can flood your mailbox 
with links if you seriously can't see why ubiquitous computing is 
valuable and indeed already the world you live in.

> And if everything is on all the time, will I
> be able to get up, plug out and cop out? 

No, probably not. You can turn off your own devices, just like today, 
but not everyone else's, just like today. Ask the cops in the Rodney 
King trial how they feel about the ubiquity of cheap camcorders. If you 
have a pacemaker installed can you turn it off? Sure, but do you want to?

> Will I be able to live in a society that has adopted ubiquitous
> computing, without having to use computers?

Can you live in society today without a telephone or television? Sure, 
but somethings are much harder. What do you mean by "use computers"? You 
probably use many, MANY more computers every day than you're aware of 
already.

> Will I be depended on my Navi
> (Serial Experiment: Lain reference) to perform even the most simple of tasks? 

Aren't you dependent on your clothing, maybe vision correction, farming, 
water purificaiton, fossil fuels, modern medicine, electricity, etc. 
already? Computers and the internet are just technology. They can 
improve peoples lives or make them worse, depending on how you look at 
it, just like all the other technologies I listed. You are of course 
always free to wander off into the bush and become a hunter and 
gatherer, that is your choice.

> What will happen when <insert your favorite monopoly here> enters the business
> and wants to make everything "interoperable"? 

Same things that happen today with existing technologies.

> What will happen if Trusted
> Computing does get accepted as the norm?

Define trusted computing. I aldready don't run raw binary executables 
that I don't trust for some reason or another.

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