Technology and You, You Little Tranhumanist You

Just a short post with a few links that you might enjoy. We will begin with a new camera application. Here is the article from Technology Review - A Camera App that Gets to Know Your Friends. Now I want you to understand how this program works. If you take a picture with your phone, this application will scan your Facebook pages and pictures stored on your phone and identify the person for you. If it is wrong then you get to correct it. You are basically providing Facebook with your friends biometrics. Please don't take my picture, thank you very much. Wait, I forgot to mention, you don't have to take the picture, it recognizes the face before you do. Turn on your camera and it automatically starts identifying the people around you.

Next we have this tattoo artist who implanted magnets under his skin in order to hold his iPod Nano to his body. CNET - Man puts magnets under skin to hold iPod Nano. I remember a while back writing a post about how another tattoo person had a 3D barcode tattooed onto him so that if you held your smartphone to it, it would display a video or whatever you wanted it to.

Finally we come to another article from CNET - Ericsson could turn you into a human USB connection next year. This article is really important to read and understand. Ericsson has created a technology where if you have your cell phone on you and shake someone's hand, they can access your data on your cell phone. As we move towards electronic currency, would you be able to steal their money just by shaking their hands? Here is a quote from the article, "The company is looking at different applications. Bhikshesvaran said the company was exploring the notion that it could end up being a new biometric footprint, since bodies all possess a unique energy signature. The company hasn't quite figured that one out yet." This technology has the ability to take your biometric body information. Now, for any of you conspiracy theorists out there, I want you to remember that all doctors in the United States are required to keep medical records in electronic form. Just think of how well you could track and identify people by combining the information. Just shaking someone's hand could identify you.

On another note, the United States Court of Appeals in Washington has determined that the National Security Agency does not have to reveal any information regarding it's dealings with Google. Yahoo News - AFP - US spy agency can keep mum on Google ties: court. While the case was in regards to a specific teaming of Google and the NSA, the precedent could be applied to any relations between the two. I wrote long ago about the relationship of the two and what it means for your privacy, you have none.

I may or may not post again tonight; but, I wanted to at least make people aware of these changes. Have a great weekend.

UPDATE

As I was reading the news I found two more articles that I see as related.

MSNBC - Touch-sensitive liquids, tables and skin in latest research. The first article is interesting and has a video that goes with it. It involves the Disney company and it's Touche system. Basically, the system recognizes your touch and different touches as having different meanings. Now then, the article says that the system requires the objects to be wired; however, if we consider what Ericsson has done in the article linked above, the only thing that needs to be wired is you through your cell phone. Lets do a little brain storming. If one were to combine the new Ericsson technology with Disney's Touche, your door could refuse to open for anyone other than you or perhaps your circle of friends. There is no need to wire everything if you yourself are wired into the grid. Imagine a world where every door would recognize you and decide if you could or could not enter. I haven't even had time to consider all of the possibilities. What if every object you touched identified you through your cell phone and that if you didn't have one, you couldn't use the object. That is not quite how it will be used; but, it will be something along these lines.

Now this is just an update on something I had written about before. I had discussed Google glasses and linked to their video. In that post I had pointed out that the commercial showed a store with internal mapping. Some may have thought that was just an idea in the video; but, this next link will show you that Google is in the process of doing it now. They intend to map out the inside of stores and other buildings. FoxNews.com - Google Maps update offers indoor walking directions. Again this is not maybe in the future stuff, this is here now and available for your Android.