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2012-07-26T18:46:59Z

Created page with 'Category:Everyday Life Computers, sensors, microcommunicators, and tiny batteries are as cheap as toilet paper, and can be imprinted directly onto most surfaces. Processors a…'

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[[Category:Everyday Life]]
Computers, sensors, microcommunicators,
and tiny batteries are as cheap as toilet paper,
and can be imprinted directly onto most surfaces.
Processors are invisible, hidden in infrastructure
and in almost every device. Humans
exist in an invisible web of infrared, laser, and
radio signals. Material goods from sneakers to
bricks are “smart,” capable of exchanging data.

Hungry? Slide a TV dinner in the oven.
Your microwave scans the package’s nanodot code
or v-tag and selects the setting. When it’s done, the
oven signals your virtual interface, which pages you.
Prefer to do your own cooking? Your virtual interface
contacts the Web and downloads a menu. If you left
the groceries in their original packaging, it scans the
labels and checks them off as you pick them up. Can’t find
something? Ask the fridge. “Pizza shells in the first shelf,”
it tells you. You pull out the anchovies instead of the
pineapple. Your virtual interface scans the label on the can.
“Those are anchovies,” its inventory agent warns. “Try
again.”

Ubiquitous monitoring is possible. Tiny “video cameras
on a chip” and microbot imaging or audio devices can
monitor public spaces. The information can be processed
due to the proliferation of AI systems, who may be
instructed to inform authorities if anything interesting or
troubling occurs: medical emergencies, criminal or subversive
acts, etc. Parties such as news media or investigators
sometimes employ similar technology on a local scale.

n practice, this sort of “Big Brother” monitoring is
restricted to a few states or colonies with authoritarian
regimes. Most countries have passed “public privacy”
laws that restrict microbot or nanocamera monitoring of
public space to certain designated areas, such as around
government buildings or during special events. Otherwise,
authorities are often required to apply to a judge to place
an area (such as a crime-ridden neighborhood) under public
surveillance, much as if they were requesting a search
warrant. “Black ops” agencies may “forget” to ask for permission,
which can lead to scandal when discovered.

Some places permit monitoring but have strict
restrictions on when information can be accessed
and by whom. Singapore is an example; it has extensive
urban surveillance but equally strict laws on when
and how humans can access the AI-filtered databases.

A few places, especially those with libertarian societies,
have no government monitoring (or no government),
but let investigators, concerned citizens, media, and anyone
else freely monitor public spaces. Individuals can set
up whatever privacy they can afford for their own persons
and property. Residents who can get the neighbors to agree
with them may declare a “privacy zone,” and hire security
firms to use swarms of microbot bug-hunters or other antisurveillance
systems to sweep the streets clean of
annoying snoops.

Despite these measures and regulations,
public privacy is fundamentally limited
because just about every person has a virtual
interface with a built-in camera capable of
recognizing faces and analyzing whom they
belong to (see [[Augmented Reality]]). However,
at least you can spot them at the same time.
Children (and often [[bioroids]]) have less privacy,
since a parent’s ability to monitor dependents is
rarely legally restricted. It is common to fit them
with biomonitors, give them virtual interfaces whose infomorphs
owe a higher allegiance, or give them an
allowance with coded limits on how much virtual cash can
be spent where. This can result in a barter economy
among kids...

Workers often have more privacy than they did in the
20th century, since a greater percentage are contractors
working at home. Even so, as they usually paid for results,
rather than by the hour, contractors working in service
jobs are often monitored to a greater or lesser degree:
supervisory software tracks the number of customers
served, people’s responses, and so on. Other jobs pair
human workers with low-sapient or sapient AI “partners.”
These may be valued co-workers and even liked, but in
jobs where the company provides them, no one forgets
whom they actually report to. The degree of AI supervision
is often the subject of vigorous contract negotiation.

Ubiquitous monitoring is quite possible in private
spaces, although employee contracts and labor law may
limit its extent. Secure installations such as military bases
or laboratories are often heavily monitored, but there may
be strict limits on who has sufficient security clearance to
view the reports.

Ubiquitous Computing and Privacy - Revision history

Ecb: Created page with 'Category:Everyday Life Computers, sensors, microcommunicators, and tiny batteries are as cheap as toilet paper, and can be imprinted directly onto most surfaces. Processors a…'