'One day, YOU won't be able to SENSE the INTERNET,' vows Schmidt Google exec chairman Eric Schmidt misled the world last week by claiming that – one day – the internet will vanish. However, Schmidt was simply following the now well-worn path of his kingpin contemporaries by bigging up the Internet of Things – a piece of marketing jargon that many tech firms hope will slip into our …
Eric, I see some real partnership potential here for off-grid package holidays, unless they too become illegal.
Off grid downtime may even become a medically recognized treatment for the inevitable mental health issues that will no doubt ensue.
Either way, we can't lose. The planning commission people said I was crazy, but I knew building a Faraday cage around Grandma's farm would eventually pay off.
Because by "with your permission", he means you have given your permission if you haven't opted out. They'll helpfully let you opt out if you show up at Google in person. So long as you find the right office in a wing of the building marked "under construction - keep out" where the lights and stairs are out of service. You'll know you've found it when you see a sign on the door "beware of the leopard".
You can't meaningfully give your permission for something you don't understand and for which you're not truly aware of the consequences. All that is irrelevant of course since people will sign up for shiny techno goodness because it's so 'convenient'.
Even opting out wont do it. The idea is to make everything so tightly-coupled that you can't meaningfully opt out of Google without basically disengaging from modern life. Even today, try blocking Google Analytics at the router-level and you will find that around a third of websites simply cease to load. They're all waiting for a response from Google telling them it's okay to go ahead.
Even just blocking Google itself let alone their analytics results in some strange effects. For quite some time I've been experiencing an odd glitch on Ars Technica where I can't click to show modded down comments. I thought it was a browser issue maybe. More recently a few other parts have stopped working causing me to investigate and it turns out that it's because my blocking of Google is breaking some of their scripts. Google is present on most sites and disengaging from Google is close to becoming impossible if you want to participate in modern life. Making it an arduous process to opt out is just the start of making it difficult to avoid tracking. The level of active effort required to avoid it is reaching absurd degrees.
Permission_request = ""Do you grant us your permission to track you at all times and use your personal data for our own commercial purposes and to report your activities to the Government?"
Response = readuserinput(Permission_request)
if (Response = "yes") then
Permission_granted = .true.
else
Permission_granted = .true.
endif
" Even today, try blocking Google Analytics at the router-level and you will find that around a third of websites simply cease to load."
So don't block it at the router level - just don't allow scripts from google-analytics.com to run.
(And only allow browser cookies to exist on your system for the session - possibly with a few convenient exceptions, as I do. Nothing from Google gets an exception on the cookie rule.)
Did you miss the bit about him being with Microsoft figurehead Nadella?
If Apple wasn't there then I can only assume they aren't interested in sharing the IoT pie with others. Let's face it, supply and demand says if everyone has the data the demand vanishes faster than the internet.
I want to avoid that one... Really, the internet will disappear? Or is he saying it will hide in plain sight? I have a feeling that even if he wanted, it won't happen. Some places can't even get a decent broadband connection. Or is he thinking his blimp will float by periodically?
More that you'll not be able to control if devices are online or not, by default they will be.
People will know what you're watching, listening to without tweeting or posting it to facebook. Facebook have already tried to do that, automatically listen to the sound in your home and include "listening to" in your posts.
>>"I want to avoid that one... Really, the internet will disappear? Or is he saying it will hide in plain sight?"
More the principle that if you turn everything brown, you will no longer see "brown", it will be meaningless and no-one will think in terms of not-brown anymore. Schmidt's vision of the future is one where no-one sees the Internet because there's nothing that isn't "the Internet" - not cars, not fridges, not people not your children. Of course by "the Internet" he means his Internet where Google has access to all of that.
Remember that this is a person who said if you don't want people to know something you shouldn't do it and that Google was going to be the next Microsoft. If the thought of Nineties Microsoft with a complete profile of your life and friends doesn't terrify you, you have a great deal more trust in human nature than most and I suggest a good newspaper or history book to cure this.
So - a future where even the rooms you walk into know immediately who you are and blow any sense of privacy you might have by personalising your experience, no matter who is watching?
And I'm supposed to look forward eagerly to this?
Fuck me, NO!
Hmm... I have to wonder if this is the NSA's wet dream: To know where everyone is and what they are doing. Google for ads, NSA (or agency of choice)/government for everything else. And we think certain governments are oppressive. I'm thinking Google is even more oppressive. It's probably just a matter of time before they become a de facto government unto themselves. I forget the author who wrote the Sci Fi book on corporations becoming government, but this is another step to that happening.
Corporations becoming government has been a long-standing theme, I think. I just thought it would always be fiction. Not so sure now.
The way Google is going I agree that it is heading towards government status. The thing is, though, it will be so powerful that it won't be NSA's (or any other spook organisation's) wet dream : it will be their nightmare, because they will be bit players compared to Google.
"I forget the author who wrote the Sci Fi book on corporations becoming government, but this is another step to that happening."
Could be William Gibson. His Sprawl trilogy mentioned megacorps that were basically self-contained worlds unto themselves complete with born-and-raised yes-men. I also know Shadowrun runs on the same principle for its dystopic future.
Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic, right?And – again – with your permission and all of that, you're interacting with the things going on in the room, a highly personalised, highly interactive and very interesting world emerges because of the disappearance of the internet.
Eric, we've had this for years. It's called the local pub, library, market, school, temple/church, etc. Life is about more than having rooms with RFID tracker enabled PIR light switches and 360 degree displays. Perhaps if you come out of your Matrix like world and join the rest of us you'll see your concept of IoT doesn't hold much value for us.
Let me say it in a way you might understand Eric, IoT doesn't have a "killer app" and isn't itself a "killer app", it's a novelty like the bearded lady at the circus and nothing more. For the vast majority of people light switches, programmable thermostats and plain old dumb sunglasses are just fine and even if you offer to upgrade us all to IoT crap for free I'm not sure it would be worth the hassle, never mind the intrusion, for most of us to take you up on it.
Now Eric, go outside and play.
You can always find prophecies that are wrong and usually find prophecies that are right. Which you find depends mostly on whether you want to prove that people can't predict the future or that they can. One of the most prescient and horrifying books I ever read was Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" and whilst dated today, it's still pretty solid in its analysis.
The introduction begins with a note that in the 20th Century we had two highly popular and successful dystopian novels both in contradiction to each other. One was Orwell's "1984". The other was Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". And Postman's book begins with the statement that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
Eric Shmidt is currently making Neil Postman (and Aldous Huxley) both look like Hari Seldon. Substitute YouTube for Soma and we're there.
Now, if we could pipe the output of that bullshit generator into google's algorithms ... problem solved methinks.
Sorry, Eric I've already got a life, and some rooms thanks and I like 'em just the way they are. And I get out and enjoy my life, and I want to do that MY way. And if the internet DID completely disappear I'd still enjoy my life - shock horror - like I did before it was invented.
Don't you know where they are?
No?
Well F**k off trying to keep 100% tabs on the rest of us.
We don't want your shite.
Oh, by the way, if you use your your search engine for search for me I'm not there. What do you think about it then?
Don't worry, we don't care what you think. We have lives in the real world to live in. Worlds where Google may not even exist.
Before walking in, you activate your signal blocking device, which is shaped a little like those antique mobile phones. This prevents the relaxing music, selected to suite your personality type and recorded tastes from activating, the wallscreens from occassionally 'informing' you of new consumption opportunities tailored to you, and sensors that record you from operating at all.
You perform the ritualistc spitting on the face of Eric the master controller. Then You get out a nice antique paper book and spend the evening reading in peace.
Six the next morning the house is raided as the facegoogle took a poll the previous evening and the masses agreed that anybody who uses dark social must be a terrorist etc, and now not sharing your life 24/7 is a crime.
"Six the next morning the house is raided as the facegoogle took a poll the previous evening and the masses agreed that anybody who uses dark social must be a terrorist etc, and now not sharing your life 24/7 is a crime."
Welcome back to the village: where you really couldn't keep a secret from your nosy neighbors...
If Hammonds right (Top Gear) about 'urican then that is because he does not appreciate the sense of awesome strength in a suburban, metropolitan environment.
Strength constrained and curtailed for conventional (and dare I say it legal) duties responsibilities and sensibilities.
Let's face it anyone with limited brain cell count can go 50 in a 20, 30, 40, ... (lack of) speedzone?
Dateline, September, 2014:
"The Internet of Things could be a security disaster waiting to happen. That's the view of Andrew Rose, a Forrester Research analyst....In fact, a recent study from HP Security Research found that 70 percent of Internet-connected devices are vulnerable to attack."
Horses before carts. Security before deployment. Unfortunately, sec bods say that is not happening: many web-enabled devices are already deployed without basic security protection.
Your toaster will pirate your credit card numbers. You know it will, look at how it burnt your muffin yesterday. It never liked you, really.
Googly Eric's vision at this point seems to be, in reality: hackz will pwn your home.
...it's going to be amazing, no really...
The kettle will turn on because I've just pulled up on the drive. 30 seconds later it will blow up because there is no water in it.
My fridge will have ordered me a £6 bottle of milk, because it knew I was running, low so ordered one + delivery costs. Now I have two, because I picked on up on my way home.
The washing machine will be finishing it's 2hr 45min cycle; granted it was empty because it doesn't load itself.
The oven will be cooking nothing at 220c because it's Sunday and it knows I like a good Sunday Roast, but it doesn't know I'm going round a friends house because I didn't post it on Facebook.
Never mind, I have 3000 hours of TV to watch when I get back because I once commented on Facebook that I've only ever seen one episode of "Friends" and people have said it's amazeballs, so it's kindly downloaded the entire back catalogue.
Now apparently I've got to do some work, as Google have told me that's what I should be doing right now.
read: you can't even fucking shut your eyelids to avoid furniture, flooring, and everything else displaying ads - because they'll beam ads to show on the inside of your eyelids too. Unless you pay up to only have "the most relevant ads" fired at you. Schmidt wet dream. And I bet he's got his dirty fingers, wrists and elbows in the dream-study "research". Pure sci-fi, like self-driving cars, right?
... Schmidt is a corporate biggie-wiggie marketard with no actual concept of how tehintrawebtubes actually work, and is listening to peon marketards who also have zero concept of how tehintrawebtubes work.
Gee. Whodathunkit.
Google. Shun them. It's a slow-motion train wreck in progress.
1. Constant IoT tracking & monitoring...
2. Smartphone spying especially Android & iPhone -> Location Services & Total permissions access...
3. Future TV spying, with all TV's force connected to the internet, with camera + mic ...
4. Verizon Header tracking + Facebook, Google, Microsoft et al tracking as per today..
US tech Billionaires like Schmidt live in a different world to the rest of us. This is why Americans should be stalled as the primary pusher of the drug 'internet'... Why? Because they think invasive advertising and monitoring (live health monitoring for example) is good for our health and not in any way harmful. But what happens when that precious data is stolen? Nothing, because they have the best lobbyists and lawyers to handle all that. On a full corporate level, they have full plausible deniability...
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"so many devices, sensors, things that you're wearing, things that you're interacting with"
I carry a very small number of things that can connect to the internet - my phone, maybe a tablet or a Kindle, and depending what I'm doing I may have a laptop with me. And all of these things currently connect at my whim, and for my requirements.
If I can't control that, I don't want - I'll stick with older devices on which I can. And I certainly have no intention of wearing anything that would connect.
So in this crazy intrusive future you're talking about, Schmidt, there will (mostly) be a blind spot. Perhaps these other sensors will know there's someone there, but they might not know who - unless our increasingly intrusive governments finally get enough biometric data on us all that sensors can identify us regardless of anything we may or may not be carrying or wearing.
Either way, the systems connected to these sensors certainly won't know what I'm going to do when I enter the room, because that information will be IN MY HEAD, which is 100% off limits.
Tie it all together, make it mandatory, farm it out. Eric Blair never in his wildest nightmares saw this one coming. It'll be under the guise of saving energy to start with, i.e. your IoT lightbulb isn't sensing any movement in that room so can safely switch off, not a huge saving assuming efficient LED, but fifty thousand of them doing the same thing adds up. Then you move on to appliances like washers and driers timing their runs for off-peak demand signalled by the meter, which people like because it's cheaper and automatic. All very sensible.
Then your 'fridge gets connected to a supermarket on-line ordering system which lets the do-gooders gradually remove all the sugar and salt from the stuff you like until everything tastes worse than the box it comes in, your telly starts recording stuff you watch most frequently (throwing the odd bit o' propaganda in for good measure when TPTB decide it would be nice, along with facial profiling to see what you react to the most) and your car uploads its geo tracks for the day to the road pricing initiative when the net goes quiet. Get them used to everything happening for them and, suddenly, they're paying no attention to what it's all actually doing. Slowly, oh so slowly, you lose control of your life.
Then you scrape the data and profile folks. Ker-fuckin'-ching, not to mention being a snooper's paradise.
The whole deal is a marketing flog fest for new shinies with the latest added value, added to the fact that the smallest facets of your life will become monetisable and surveillable , there is nothing that will escape connection.
Your shoes will tell how far you walk and how often or how fast, so that your life/health insurance will tell you ' You are a lard arse your health problems are self inflicted so we won't pay out'
I haven't figured out what your underwear may say about you but it will in all probability say something.
Outerwear will probably contribute to powering the rest of your kit so if you are not wearing generative clothing you will be considered anti social by contributing more CO2 into the environment.
Hats will become fashionable because they will have inbuilt EECG monitors that will enable your brainwaves to be analysed along with physiometrics captured by public and workplace cameras to determine your social/anti-social/terrorist potential.
Aside from that the ability to apparently decide in microscopic detail what your buying preferences are will result in the perfect advertising campaign aimed at you personally.
And that's without even getting to what your house/car/workplace will do.
What a marvelous future the young can look forward to.
"Aside from that the ability to apparently decide in microscopic detail what your buying preferences are will result in the perfect advertising campaign aimed at you personally."
Advertising will be useless because everyone'll have enough information from the IoT to always have only the best *version available and everyone will know what that is and buy only that. The end of materialism as we know it. Only form will matter. Functionality will cease to function.
I have mixed feelings about the IoT.
On the one hand, I write device drivers for a living so I'm looking forward to the greatly increased job opportunities with every Thing needing a device driver.
On the other hand, I'm not really into home automation, let alone IoT. I prefer to keep it simple.
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