What Future?

Posted by Greg at February 8th, 2007

So, the Calgary Health Region has finally rolled out their Electronic Health Record program, after years in development. They even hope to make it available to to home user:

The public will eventually be able to access their own health information, but that won’t happen until a consultation process is completed.

Wait a minute. What about privacy? What if a hacker gets access to our most personal of personal information, that about our own biological bodies? Worry not:

Bill Trafford, the head of advanced technology for the health region, said the system was secure against hacking. None of the information is downloadable and it is password protected.

Anyone who says systems are secure against hacking and that none of the information is downloadable while promising to let people view the information from home over the internet needs to a) give their head a shake and b) not be in charge of advanced technology.

Posted by Carol at February 3rd, 2007

No longer is it sufficient to stock the shelves with slow-burning G. W. Bush mannequins alone - Chinese President Hu Jintao is proving himself able as  an internationally disliked political figure:

“President Hu cancelled one of the showpieces of his African tour yesterday after warnings of anti-Chinese protests.

Still…China’s economic needs — which have already helped its trade with Africa to increase fourfold in a decade to about $55 billion (£29 billion) — are set to triumph over any diplomatic niceties.”

Proof positive that neocolonialism needn’t require a North-South connection?

Posted by Greg at December 21st, 2006

Second Life real estate tycoon Anshe Chung is alive and well after a vicious online attack by the anarchist communist terrorist group known as Room 101 saw Chung’s digital self pelted by a stream of pink dildos and obscene photos.

Video of the attack is available here.
This kind of hilariously disruptive spectacle will only become more common as real world businesses and public figures move into Second Life space. Hillary Clinton being assailed by a swarm of Lewinsky heads, Rudy Giuliani being surrounded by towers that just won’t quit falling, or American Apparel’s Second Life store filled with underage porn (ok, that last one isn’t so hard).

As much as this sort of attack might prevent the careful management of brand image that is possible in the real world, I hope they are not completely disallowed or criminalized. While griefers as a concept are, as a friend of mine just said, “pretty much the suck,” as long as resource allocation and system stability don’t suffer and personal rights are not infringed, the kind of twisted whimsical humor they can inject into online environments is very entertaining and provides a much-needed outlet for people to talk back to the figures who drive modern capitalism.
As polished a delivery as might be possible by a politician giving a prepared speech in Second Life may be, the improvised reaction to a stream of pink dildos or other unexpectedly weird interruption would add a bit of a personal flavor that has been missing from both politics and corporate capitalism for as long as I can remember.

Posted by Greg at December 10th, 2006

Holiday cheer got you down? Consider this: Earth is a scary place and there are a lot of things that could kill us.

We know a lot about the current threats, and yet we’re only marginally well-equipped to deal with them. We’ve had fusion weapons for fifty years without wiping ourselves out, but such weapons are making their way into the hands of less stable dictatorships. We’ve had both Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis save us from being smashed by Hollywood space rocks, but we don’t have a real plan for detecting and destroying real ones. The flu could kill millions of us, but at least we’re talking about ways to mitigate an outbreak. The 20th century may have been the bloodiest ever, but considering the risks we faced, we didn’t do too badly.

Enter the 21st century. It seems that the transhumanist community has been addressing the possible threats of emerging technology with more seriousness. This is a good thing. There are serious risks posed by nanotech, biotech, and advanced artificial intelligence. But how to enumerate and prepare for them?
Accelerating Future is attempting to list and categorize the threats that accidents, military leaders, mad scientists, supervillians and disgruntled grad students will throw at us in the 21st century:

The important ones:

1. superintelligence - not just AI - but superhumans too
2. deliberate misuse of nanotech (arms race, nanoweapons)
3. accidental misuse of nanotech
4. killer artificial virus
5. antimatter holocaust?
6. particle accelerator disaster

Fortunately, they have some potential solutions too. Go contribute your own.

Posted by Greg at December 4th, 2006

I wrote the Copyfight! column for this month’s issue of Discorder, and it’s finally found its way to the web. It discusses the confusion around private copying in Canada and the potential for change in the Heritage Minister Bev Oda’s upcoming changes.

Imagine: Your favourite band has just recorded a new, critically acclaimed, Pitchfork-approved, life-changing indie rock gem. Naturally, you want to support their creative endeavours, so rather than grabbing the album three weeks early on Soulseek, you wait for it to be released in stores. You get home from the shop, palms sweating with anticipation as you tear off the cellophane. After a couch-bound evening of headphone bliss, you decide to copy the album to your computer and put it on your iPod for your morning commute. Congratulations—you just illegally copied your legally purchased music.

The entire article is available here.

Posted by Greg at November 2nd, 2006

From Slashdot comes Privacy International’s 2006 ranking of the best and worst international defenders of privacy and perpetrators of surveillance.

What Future? usually tries to avoid this kind of Big Brother privacy/surveillance talk, but anything other than anecdotal evidence of the erosion of privacy rights around the world is pretty rare. This kind of comparative study shows us exactly where we stand in terms of rights of the individual and offers incentive for governments to improve through legislation and regulation.
The final rankings:

1. Germany
2. Canada
3. Belgium
3. Austria
5. Greece
6. Argentina
6. Hungary
8. France
8. Poland
8. Portugal
8. Cyprus
12. Finland
13. Italy
13. Luxembourg
13. Latvia
13. Estonia
13. Malta
18. Denmark
18. Czech Republic
18. Ireland
18. Lithuania
18. New Zealand
18. Slovakia
24. Australia
24. Spain
26. Slovenia
26. Netherlands
28. Israel
28. Sweden
30. United States
31. Thailand
31. Philippines
33. Britain
34. Singapore
34. Russia
36. Malaysia
36. China