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@techploration
Wondering what the future of a technology might look like in five years? Ten? In thirty years after the power grid fails post solar flare? Need plausible (or at least vaguely plausible) tech ideas for a story or game? Need to discuss the pros and cons of the subscription streaming model when it applies to accessing your memories?
Send an ask and I’ll brainstorm some tech with you!
They warn of your identity being on display to steal-- I worry that it will more often be used to erase who you are
Since wearable computers first ventured out the realm of pure speculation into technological possibility, the discussion of privacy and facial recognition has been at the forefront. Early concepts explored the idea of matching people in view with their online profiles. There is real concern about filmed and fed into algorithms without your consent, added to a model you wanted no part in. Many people have described this horriying future where strangers learn everything about you with a simple glance, making being anonymous in public impossible
The fundamental assumption behind this though is that everyone is trying to steal your data or doxx you.
The reality is that most people are boring from this perspective. Imagine you saw everyone's Facebook profile hovering over their head. And? If you don't know them there is likely nothing you care about there.
People have the very natural bias to assume that they would be a target in this hypothetical but that really isn't the case.
The hypothetical positive of these scenarios is being able to discover shared interests immediately when meeting someone new. Connect digital communities to physical spaces. Make the barriers of your digital and analog life blur
It's going to be neither. It is going to be used to erase the people
We are getting closer to the point where wearable mixed reality is going to be a daily part of life. I know multiple people who spend all day working in mixed reality, and I don't think they are wrong when they describe it as the next step in computing. Having as many screens and windows as you want floating around you is dream setup for working in a digital world. The tech is going to spread like it always does
One of the current MX devices on the market is the Apple Vision Pro. It has a dial where you can adjust how much reality comes in. One extreme, you only see an endless beach and hear the ocean, the other end you see your room. In between though, you see the beach, but also the chair in front of you. It replaces what it can of your field of view, only drawing attention to potential hazards
This is the reality of how these devices will be used. Your fear shouldn't be that the person sitting across from you on the subway is digging through your social media, it's that they won't see you at all. You'll be erased as just more visual noise, painted over with beach sunset
And there will be worse versions. It is bad enough to be erased, but we will also be transformed without consent. Easy to picture a Pokemon Go style game where all the people around you are replaced with sprites. You don't see a crowd of people on the subway, but giant cute stuffed animals
How long until someone made a version that removed 'scary' people? How can you have autonomy of identity if your identity is filtered from existence? We already see this happening in online spaces-- Tumblr is well known for derealizing trans women, erasing their existence and defining their existence as 'mature and explicit'.
How long until a version comes out that changes the perceived race of people? An app that makes every person you see a VTuber style avatar that also happens to give them lighter skin. And the crazy part is that some people will argue that this helps combat racism and xenophobia by erasing differences when in fact it will get used to cosplay ethnostates while ignoring the real people around them
They warn of your identity being on display to steal-- I worry that it will more often be used to erase who you are
Since wearable computers first ventured out the realm of pure speculation into technological possibility, the discussion of privacy and facial recognition has been at the forefront. Early concepts explored the idea of matching people in view with their online profiles. There is real concern about filmed and fed into algorithms without your consent, added to a model you wanted no part in. Many people have described this horriying future where strangers learn everything about you with a simple glance, making being anonymous in public impossible
The fundamental assumption behind this though is that everyone is trying to steal your data or doxx you.
The reality is that most people are boring from this perspective. Imagine you saw everyone's Facebook profile hovering over their head. And? If you don't know them there is likely nothing you care about there.
People have the very natural bias to assume that they would be a target in this hypothetical but that really isn't the case.
The hypothetical positive of these scenarios is being able to discover shared interests immediately when meeting someone new. Connect digital communities to physical spaces. Make the barriers of your digital and analog life blur
It's going to be neither. It is going to be used to erase the people
The winner of the video streaming wars is not going to be any of the current major players. Most will collapse or be absorbed within the next decade. Their costs will run too high for revenues too low. We are well into the backlash now as people stare at a splintering landscape after every IP holder felt it necessary to create their own streaming service and realizing too late that it was a stupid idea
Add to the mix that an increasing amount of intellectual property is owned by private equity firms who have no interest in the content, just leveraging it for money
We are soon going to be back in the situation that led to Netflix’s initial success— huge media catalogs with zero distribution making zero money (once the short term tax write off passes)
And YouTube is going to pick up the pieces
Best model for this is music. There is a huge amount of music out there that is not available to purchase in any form. Defunct labels with rosters of dead artists. So what happens if you want to play some of that music on the radio?
You can, and if it is an ASCAP registered song then it will count as a radio broadcast and the rights holders get royalties. Don’t know who currently owns it? Just keep track and later when someone proves they’re the rights holder they get the money
This is how YouTube music works. Most commercially released music is ASCAP registered. That’s why you can find all sorts of music not on Spotify on YouTube. They just count it as a stream of a song regardless of the artist putting it on the platform
It is far from a perfect system, but it makes a clear model for tv and film
Yes tv and film involve more people and hence more complexity, but at some point the content is going to go up online. So, might as well make money instead of having only pirated
The reason it will be YouTube is because it is not going to be the studios putting up the files
It’s going to be fan rips. All the labor will be the fanbase. They just take the streaming revenue in exchange for not issuing a Cease & Desist
The lasting legacy of Netflix won’t be its original programming or bringing streaming into the mainstream
It’s going to be web infrastructure
The Herculean feat that Netflix does 24/7 is move ungodly qualities of data at high rates with minimal drops in quality
It’s like Ma Bell laying the copper across the country to then be dismembered into her children. But this time something is ready to eat the pieces
Another example of ‘the pioneer isn’t often the victor’ from tech— the GUI (graphical user interface)
In 2025 GUIs are such the default that we mostly just say UI. But back in early computing the default was a text based user interface displayed on a screen and navigated by a keyboard. Worlds easier than punchcard or similar
Then one company came up with a whole new approach— displaying graphic icons on the screen instead of text, and provide a way to easily select those graphics. The mouse.
The company? Xerox
They built an entire operating system based around GUI navigation. It was groundbreaking. It was also never released. The whole OS initiative scrapped
A series of bad decisions led to this happening (i remember one detail was devs were paid by line of code which unintentionally incentivized bloated code) but it did get seen by some key people
The first to market clone was the Macintosh OS. It was then followed by Microsoft’s upgrade from DOS to Windows
At one point Bill Gates made a comment about Steve Jobs stealing the concept of the GUI from Xerox and Jobs replied along the lines of ‘we both looted the house you’re just made i got away with the TV’
The winner of the video streaming wars is not going to be any of the current major players. Most will collapse or be absorbed within the next decade. Their costs will run too high for revenues too low. We are well into the backlash now as people stare at a splintering landscape after every IP holder felt it necessary to create their own streaming service and realizing too late that it was a stupid idea
Add to the mix that an increasing amount of intellectual property is owned by private equity firms who have no interest in the content, just leveraging it for money
We are soon going to be back in the situation that led to Netflix’s initial success— huge media catalogs with zero distribution making zero money (once the short term tax write off passes)
And YouTube is going to pick up the pieces
Best model for this is music. There is a huge amount of music out there that is not available to purchase in any form. Defunct labels with rosters of dead artists. So what happens if you want to play some of that music on the radio?
You can, and if it is an ASCAP registered song then it will count as a radio broadcast and the rights holders get royalties. Don’t know who currently owns it? Just keep track and later when someone proves they’re the rights holder they get the money
This is how YouTube music works. Most commercially released music is ASCAP registered. That’s why you can find all sorts of music not on Spotify on YouTube. They just count it as a stream of a song regardless of the artist putting it on the platform
It is far from a perfect system, but it makes a clear model for tv and film
Yes tv and film involve more people and hence more complexity, but at some point the content is going to go up online. So, might as well make money instead of having only pirated
The reason it will be YouTube is because it is not going to be the studios putting up the files
It’s going to be fan rips. All the labor will be the fanbase. They just take the streaming revenue in exchange for not issuing a Cease & Desist
The lasting legacy of Netflix won’t be its original programming or bringing streaming into the mainstream
It’s going to be web infrastructure
The Herculean feat that Netflix does 24/7 is move ungodly qualities of data at high rates with minimal drops in quality
It’s like Ma Bell laying the copper across the country to then be dismembered into her children. But this time something is ready to eat the pieces
The winner of the video streaming wars is not going to be any of the current major players. Most will collapse or be absorbed within the next decade. Their costs will run too high for revenues too low. We are well into the backlash now as people stare at a splintering landscape after every IP holder felt it necessary to create their own streaming service and realizing too late that it was a stupid idea
Add to the mix that an increasing amount of intellectual property is owned by private equity firms who have no interest in the content, just leveraging it for money
We are soon going to be back in the situation that led to Netflix’s initial success— huge media catalogs with zero distribution making zero money (once the short term tax write off passes)
And YouTube is going to pick up the pieces
Best model for this is music. There is a huge amount of music out there that is not available to purchase in any form. Defunct labels with rosters of dead artists. So what happens if you want to play some of that music on the radio?
You can, and if it is an ASCAP registered song then it will count as a radio broadcast and the rights holders get royalties. Don’t know who currently owns it? Just keep track and later when someone proves they’re the rights holder they get the money
This is how YouTube music works. Most commercially released music is ASCAP registered. That’s why you can find all sorts of music not on Spotify on YouTube. They just count it as a stream of a song regardless of the artist putting it on the platform
It is far from a perfect system, but it makes a clear model for tv and film
Yes tv and film involve more people and hence more complexity, but at some point the content is going to go up online. So, might as well make money instead of having only pirated
The reason it will be YouTube is because it is not going to be the studios putting up the files
It’s going to be fan rips. All the labor will be the fanbase. They just take the streaming revenue in exchange for not issuing a Cease & Desist
The winner of the video streaming wars is not going to be any of the current major players. Most will collapse or be absorbed within the next decade. Their costs will run too high for revenues too low. We are well into the backlash now as people stare at a splintering landscape after every IP holder felt it necessary to create their own streaming service and realizing too late that it was a stupid idea
Add to the mix that an increasing amount of intellectual property is owned by private equity firms who have no interest in the content, just leveraging it for money
We are soon going to be back in the situation that led to Netflix’s initial success— huge media catalogs with zero distribution making zero money (once the short term tax write off passes)
And YouTube is going to pick up the pieces
The first massively successful company to harness the potential of AI will call it anything but AI
This is beyond the pedantic ‘it’s not artificial intelligence it’s a neural network’ argument of terminology. This is purely branding.
AI is rapidly becoming a toxic word to have associated with your company. It has become shorthand for lazy and cheap. Three quarters of what is marketed as AI isn’t even AI.
We are at peak ‘shove AI in it’ right now as every app and piece of software is promoting their ‘AI enhancements’ and general privacy destroying bloatware. Give it six months before the combination of customer pushback and rising server/data costs means all these companies start quietly dropping their AI features
A year from now announcing the new ‘AI enhancements’ of your product will sound as ridiculous as saying you’re launching NFTs in 2024
Tech Bros are going to effectively kill ‘AI’ within the next two years. But what they are destroying the marketability of technology branded AI, not the actual power of neural networks.
So the first massively successful use of neural networks on a consumer scale will do everything in its power to not call itself AI. It will also be something completely different than what people think of AI now.
Here is a real world example of actual practical use of neural networks— produce scanning
One of the grocery stores i shop at recently added small cameras at self checkout focused on the scale. Previously you put your item and then entered PL code (or lookup by name) and it would then calculate the price
Now you just place the items and it knows they are bananas, or grapes, or any other item sold by weight. It’s not perfect but it does eliminate the need to type or search about 90% of the time
There was no fanfare. No signs announcing this new feature. They just added little Toshiba cameras to self checkout. The user workflow is the same, just eliminating some tedious steps.
They were fucking smart to not scream from the rooftops that they have AI powered checkout
The first massively successful company to harness the potential of AI will call it anything but AI
This is beyond the pedantic ‘it’s not artificial intelligence it’s a neural network’ argument of terminology. This is purely branding.
AI is rapidly becoming a toxic word to have associated with your company. It has become shorthand for lazy and cheap. Three quarters of what is marketed as AI isn’t even AI.
We are at peak ‘shove AI in it’ right now as every app and piece of software is promoting their ‘AI enhancements’ and general privacy destroying bloatware. Give it six months before the combination of customer pushback and rising server/data costs means all these companies start quietly dropping their AI features
A year from now announcing the new ‘AI enhancements’ of your product will sound as ridiculous as saying you’re launching NFTs in 2024
Tech Bros are going to effectively kill ‘AI’ within the next two years. But what they are destroying the marketability of technology branded AI, not the actual power of neural networks.
So the first massively successful use of neural networks on a consumer scale will do everything in its power to not call itself AI. It will also be something completely different than what people think of AI now.
How Do You Hide DNA?
The TV trope answer is rubber gloves and bleach. You do your best to not leave any, and destroy what is left. This is also the Gattaca approach, where in a society stratified by DNA you avoid detection of your ‘inferior’ DNA by … exfoliating?
This approach has obvious flaws. Imagining that you’ll never shed a hair or eyelash or slough off some skin cells seems naive. Encasing your body in a DNA encapsulating shroud is hardly subtle or convenient (hazmat chic has yet to happen). So what do you do?
You add some Noise
You know what is a lot easier than making sure no one ever gets a hold of your DNA? Making sure no one can reliably get a hold of your DNA, and that your DNA never shows up on its own.
You might think I’m going to suggest hacking your own DNA so that it changes constantly— let’s call that phase 2.
Phase 1– DNA spore cloud
Imagine this but all DNA
You set up simple bioreactor farms to churn out DNA strands (this tech already exists), get your sequence source from Ancestry.com and you get to work laundering DNA.
A misting of this DNA soup would make all other DNA functionally invisible— how are you going to separate out one set of DNA from the others?
And with the randomness of the seed data (and data breaches), your DNA being present has no legal bearing on you having been there in person.
Oh, and Phase 3 is we hack lichens to generate human DNA spore clouds and add them to architecture as a passive form of DNA cloaking
An Actual Use for LLMs
Large Language Models like ChatGPT are all the rage for investment right now, but 98% of the applications we see are complete misuses (see: Willy Wonka Experience).
So if you aren’t trying to save budget by firing writers (never going to work anyways), what’s an actual practical use for an LLM?
Translating internet speak
People who rely on screen readers complain that aesthetic typing quirks (homestuck/classic l337 spe4k) along with all the tiktok style censoring break readers. Screen readers aren’t anticipating numbers to sub for letters, or there to be a pronunciation for an emoji + letter contraction.
Don’t use the LLM to generate spam emails— have is read the post and translate all the internet speak. Have it read out ‘I have leet skills’ and not ‘I aich-four-vee-ee el-three-three-tee es-kay-one-el-el-ze’
Yes you could make a simple algorithm that does search-and-replace for alternate spellings, but that is a never ending battle to keep it up to date. To enter every variation. An LLM (once properly trained) could see a spelling variation it has never encountered and make an educated guess. It would learn that ‘yass’ is the same as ‘yaaaass’ and ‘yassssss’ and instead of defining every single combination it just learns that repeat letters can often be swapped with a single letter. It learns that 1 can be ‘i’ and 7 can be ‘t’ so even though it’s never seen b4k3d z171 it pronounces it ‘baked ziti’ and suddenly the shitpost makes sense
Future Forecaste: Tumblr
It’s clear Matt fucked up, and there is a very real chance he won’t be able to come back from this without lasting changes. He isn’t a complete idiot, but also seems to have an ego as resilient as a damp tissue. Once he is back from sabbatical and his PR team has wrestled his phone out his hands, this is going to be the game plan.
The Scapegoat Buffer
The fact that he has gone into the DMs of random users to hash out this beef shows that he is not suitable for the role, and is likely going to be forced out of the position of Tumblr CEO.
But just Tumblr
He will remain the head of Automattic. Wordpress will still be his. He is not stepping away from his empire, only ceding control of a single fiefdom. But at the end of the day, he’s still king
Their pick will seem perfect at first. A progressive choice— a member of one of the communities targeted by Matt’s bigotry. A new CEO who Matt will be able to tout as a clear example of his learning and progress and blah blah blah PR bullshit because you know what?
They are going to be powerless.
Less than a figurehead. They are going to use them to try and cleanse their own image while slashing Tumblr’s budget even more. They will find a CEO that honestly wants change and progress and for Tumblr to live up the their ‘queerest place on the web’ badge of honor
And then they will give them none of the tools. No money, no resources (or rapidly dwindling resources), and absolutely. zero. support from above.
All So It Won’t be Matt’s Failure
He’s going to make sure of that. He can’t make Tumblr profitable. He doesn’t have the vision to move Tumblr into the future. So he is going to foist it on to someone else and make it their failure. He didn’t fuck up Tumblr, the next guy did. This probably sounds familiar because this is exactly what happened with Elon at Twitter. And it will be the same thing where the ‘Tumblr CEO’ will just absorb the blame while laundering Matt’s shitty ideas until Tumblr is finally pulled from life support
And then the Tumblr CEO’s perceived failure will be used to reinforce Matt’s bigotry
I really don’t want the first trans head of a major tech company to fail only because they had their hands tied (and not in the fun way)
Future Forecaste: Tumblr
It’s clear Matt fucked up, and there is a very real chance he won’t be able to come back from this without lasting changes. He isn’t a complete idiot, but also seems to have an ego as resilient as a damp tissue. Once he is back from sabbatical and his PR team has wrestled his phone out his hands, this is going to be the game plan.
The Scapegoat Buffer
The fact that he has gone into the DMs of random users to hash out this beef shows that he is not suitable for the role, and is likely going to be forced out of the position of Tumblr CEO.
But just Tumblr
He will remain the head of Automattic. Wordpress will still be his. He is not stepping away from his empire, only ceding control of a single fiefdom. But at the end of the day, he’s still king
Their pick will seem perfect at first. A progressive choice— a member of one of the communities targeted by Matt’s bigotry. A new CEO who Matt will be able to tout as a clear example of his learning and progress and blah blah blah PR bullshit because you know what?
They are going to be powerless.
Less than a figurehead. They are going to use them to try and cleanse their own image while slashing Tumblr’s budget even more. They will find a CEO that honestly wants change and progress and for Tumblr to live up the their ‘queerest place on the web’ badge of honor
And then they will give them none of the tools. No money, no resources (or rapidly dwindling resources), and absolutely. zero. support from above.
All So It Won’t be Matt’s Failure
He’s going to make sure of that. He can’t make Tumblr profitable. He doesn’t have the vision to move Tumblr into the future. So he is going to foist it on to someone else and make it their failure. He didn’t fuck up Tumblr, the next guy did. This probably sounds familiar because this is exactly what happened with Elon at Twitter. And it will be the same thing where the ‘Tumblr CEO’ will just absorb the blame while laundering Matt’s shitty ideas until Tumblr is finally pulled from life support
And then the Tumblr CEO’s perceived failure will be used to reinforce Matt’s bigotry
A Cascading Fix
The floating garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean a huge ongoing issue. Plastic is the worst offender (and no it’s not all drinking straws and plastic bags— it’s mostly discarded fishing nets). Skimming would be too costly and unrealistic (it’s country sized— big country). Plus is almost a biome at this point— you couldn’t scoop out the trash without also scooping animals/eggs/plants basically causing more havoc trying to clean it up.
So what do you turn to? Bacteria
So this area has been in active research for 25+ years as the ultimate solution to dealing with plastic waste.
Should be great right? The lifespan of a bottle in a landfill falls from centuries to weeks in a vat. It’s such an alluring goal that people gloss over the path
Brute forcing thousands upon thousands of mutations on an enzyme that specializes in breaking down hydrocarbons sounds wildly risky.
Because what if you get one that does too well?
Future Forecaste
Silicon Valley Tech Bro Billion wants to try and improve his image as a part of the private jet class by holding a big public competition for innovative solutions for the garbage patch. Encourages all of his tech bro buddies to pitch their ideas. Billionaire promises to fund a pilot project for the top idea.
What wins out? Bacteria
And they apply the Facebook ‘move fast and break things’ philosophy to brute forcing mutations. Garbage patch is in international waters, so no approval (or oversight) to go and test your ideas.
In fact, with being out in the middle of the ocean, you can build your lab right on a boat and sail out there. And test your iterations right there. In the ocean. Why test on a simulated garbage patch when the real one is right there?
Success! A strain that breaks down plastics in a short timeframe in the cold of the ocean! Your test site quickly goes from floating landfill to. something?
The enzymes broke the plastic into component nutrients. So you now have effectively dumped a whole flood of nutrients into the water. Kinda like dumping fertilizer
Cool. So now you you have turned garbage patch into the Great Pacific Algal Bloom and Dead Zone
And the bacteria isn’t staying put. Oceans have a way of moving things, and you just built a hardy sailor with a plentiful food supply.
The bacteria makes it to shore and suddenly, plastic isn’t permanent. Plastic isn’t safe in water. Every seal and gasket is now prone to failure. There is a rush to figure out which types of plastics are susceptible, which are resistant. New plastics with bacteria resistance are developed.
But that’s not even going to be the biggest issue
We’ve Got a Fuel Pox on our Hands
If it likes to eat plastic know what it’ll love? Gasoline and any other hydrocarbon
This bacteria would essentially turn gas into soy sauce. Think about fuel rotting
Suddenly world’s energy supply is at risk. Fear of contamination becomes the oil and gas industry’s number one concern. Gas becomes an even more precious commodity, and is only used when application demands. The industry takes on surgical level of cleanliness.
Meanwhile other people are prepping ‘Kombucha’ for their local pipeline
Self driving cars are an inevitability at this point.
Not just assisted, but full autonomous driving. And it is going to fundamentally change our relationship with cars and transportation in general.
People are going to stop buying cars. The whole sales pitch of everyone buying their own self driving car is ludicrous— it fundamentally misses the opportunity that self driving actually presents.
Owning a car sucks. Having constant immediate access to transportation is a form of autonomy.
Both those things can be true. A car has to be maintained, insured, parked, replaced, protected, fueled— this whole laundry lists of responsibilities to maintain access to self directed transportation.
What about all the perks of having a car, but none of the hassle? That’s what a self driving car offers. A car when you need it, where you need it, without having to worry about everything else that goes along with owning a car.
Because you won’t own the car.
How much time do you actually spend driving? How much time is your car just sitting there? Why worry about and pay for a car you’re not driving?
Your car is going to be a subscription service
Uber is already testing this basic model, but in a world of self driving cars it makes perfect sense. You don’t own a car. You have a Car Subscription, which means there is a car there to drive you when you need— scheduled in advance or on demand. You pay for different subscription levels (pay per mile, unlimited, luxury, etc)
A personalized public transportation
People will realize owning a car is actually a burden, and a fleet of self driving cars that take themselves for servicing and refueling is actually a world easier.
There are going to be two major downsides
First, you are going to be tracked. Not just where you’re going but what you’re listening to and riding with on the way there. Think about it— you will not be able to anonymously go anywhere
Owning a car will become suspicious— an expensive luxury that offers anonymity. It will be like having a pager in the 90s— associated with doctors and drug dealers. Bikes and motorcycles will thrive in the ‘socially acceptable non tracked transportation’
Second major issue will be ads
The double edge sword of a self driving car is that it frees you up to do other things.
You think you are going to get to sit and enjoy life uninterrupted by ads during your morning commute? Your Hulu and Netflix are already synced— you buckle your seatbelt and your episode picks up where you left off. Spotify is connected. Your use profile instantly tailors the ride to your tastes
Just watch a couple ads first
You can always pay extra to go ad free. You’re just sitting there anyways. Also means they can finally get rid of billboards (or at least move them to inside the car). Short on funds? Watch ads your whole ride for a discount.
Even shorter on funds? Well, we reached your destination, but the doors won’t unlock until you finish watching this two minute ad (and no closing your eyes)
The transition will be swift in cities and take a decade plus to spread to more rural areas. It’s the same pattern as happened to the horse
Horses are great— self driving, smart, capable of making decisions when the rider is incapacitated
They also die if you don’t feed them
Unless you need to complete some horse specific tasks, why would you own a horse? Expensive and high maintenance compared to a car
Cars also don’t shit, and don’t need to be tied up with water outside.
In cities like London cars replaced horses in a matter of years. Think about that— one of the primary forms of transportation for millennia becomes obsolete in a blink
And we are about to see it happen again
Self driving cars are an inevitability at this point.
Not just assisted, but full autonomous driving. And it is going to fundamentally change our relationship with cars and transportation in general.
People are going to stop buying cars. The whole sales pitch of everyone buying their own self driving car is ludicrous— it fundamentally misses the opportunity that self driving actually presents.
Owning a car sucks. Having constant immediate access to transportation is a form of autonomy.
Both those things can be true. A car has to be maintained, insured, parked, replaced, protected, fueled— this whole laundry lists of responsibilities to maintain access to self directed transportation.
What about all the perks of having a car, but none of the hassle? That’s what a self driving car offers. A car when you need it, where you need it, without having to worry about everything else that goes along with owning a car.
Because you won’t own the car.
How much time do you actually spend driving? How much time is your car just sitting there? Why worry about and pay for a car you’re not driving?
Your car is going to be a subscription service
Uber is already testing this basic model, but in a world of self driving cars it makes perfect sense. You don’t own a car. You have a Car Subscription, which means there is a car there to drive you when you need— scheduled in advance or on demand. You pay for different subscription levels (pay per mile, unlimited, luxury, etc)
A personalized public transportation
People will realize owning a car is actually a burden, and a fleet of self driving cars that take themselves for servicing and refueling is actually a world easier.
There are going to be two major downsides
First, you are going to be tracked. Not just where you’re going but what you’re listening to and riding with on the way there. Think about it— you will not be able to anonymously go anywhere
Owning a car will become suspicious— an expensive luxury that offers anonymity. It will be like having a pager in the 90s— associated with doctors and drug dealers. Bikes and motorcycles will thrive in the ‘socially acceptable non tracked transportation’
Second major issue will be ads
The double edge sword of a self driving car is that it frees you up to do other things.
You think you are going to get to sit and enjoy life uninterrupted by ads during your morning commute? Your Hulu and Netflix are already synced— you buckle your seatbelt and your episode picks up where you left off. Spotify is connected. Your use profile instantly tailors the ride to your tastes
Just watch a couple ads first
You can always pay extra to go ad free. You’re just sitting there anyways. Also means they can finally get rid of billboards (or at least move them to inside the car). Short on funds? Watch ads your whole ride for a discount.
Even shorter on funds? Well, we reached your destination, but the doors won’t unlock until you finish watching this two minute ad (and no closing your eyes)
Skittering Data Harvesters
Keeping your data secure is tricky. Every time you send a message electronically there is a chance of digital eavesdropping. There is not such thing as total security— your goal is to minimize risk.
So you secure your home network— VPNs, encryption, not a single ‘smart’ appliance. Ad blocker on everything, chat only on closed platforms. You do your best to minimize and anonymize your digital shadow.
But. you’re still getting targeted ads? You get a loan offer for your exact credit debt?
And then you lift your wireless router while cleaning and see a metallic shimmer as something scurries off the back of the table.
Of course. You’ve got bugs.
Literal and Figurative Bugs
As more people install ad blocker and opt out of data collection what are advertisers going to do? Stop collecting every shred of data they can about you? That sure doesn’t sound like capitalism. Turning to shady data collection by legally separate 3rd parties? That sounds a bit more likely
So in come bugs, which are small, cheap data sniffers that crawl themselves into place, collect data until their storage is full, crawl back to a public network and upload your cache. Repeat
They come in hundreds of varieties— colors, features, specializations. Most look like some variation of beetle (a good design is a good design)
They get past digital security by crawling past physical security. They are not looking at what sites you visit— they are clinging to your laptop cloning your entire hard drive. It latched on to your purse when you set it down grabbing coffee, and now you can’t get them out your apartment. You smashed a few and keep seeing more, so you are certain they built a Queen (you found the remnants of your old phone— they must have stripped it for parts)
You also learned you can’t just stomp them and throw them away. You broke the shell but the data is still there. And turns out they don’t just clone their bodies— they clone their data. So they all have your data. And they are going to sell it.
How is this even grey area legal? Because it is anonymous. They don’t target, they infect. The data is random and disorganized. Overwhelming noise to signal ratio. They are supposed to scrub all identifying details, bank info, etc.
So the reality is that it is horrific and predatory but hugely beneficial to advertisers so regulation is minimal and the legal battles protracted.
Oh, and part of the reason it’s so hard to control is that it is an opensource project. The software is on github and parts off the shelf. The hundreds of varieties of the hundreds of competing companies, trying to out perform each other, trying to snipe data from each other.
But no one is sure who wrote the original program (the github author claims to have found it on a forum and the thread gets more tangled from there)
In fact, the more threads you follow, the more knots form. It’s not just the authorship of the software— you question how many of these companies there actually are. Individual brands of bugs are fleeting. Companies last as long as they can stretch their legal window and then scatter to the wind— their bugs cannibalized by competitors and employees moving to former rivals.
But they are all buying parts from the same suppliers, use the same microcontroller
and use the same big data processor
The primary supplier has gotten so successful that they set up regional distribution centers. And you can’t confirm it, but everything points to the supplier and the microprocessor manufacturer being owned by the same company
There’s the classic saying about the California gold rush along the lines of ‘It wasn’t the people digging for gold who got rich—it was the people selling the shovels’
Well what if you not only sold the shovels but then bought the gold? What if you got to set the price of that gold?
What if your gold diggers never even got to touch or see the gold, and instead pay them a pittance to run PR for self digging shovels?
Pretty sure it’s the Data Processor who also owns the suppliers and manufacturers. They own the full lifecycle— they make and sell the parts, own the patents on any proprietary tech, and then get to buy and sell the data at rates they control.
Remember, this is messy data— processing is not only expensive but difficult. You need someone who specializes in that, who can pull the value out of the noise.
So you release a fleet of tiny robots to collect massive amounts of data, data which is functionally useless to anyone else but through your processing becomes near priceless
Near priceless, because people will eagerly shell out for this data.
The only part where they don’t make money is selling or operating the Bugs themselves— that’s where the most risk lies. So they are happy for a succession of companies to take the fall while they keep growing in the background
Story Tangent
You specialize as an exterminator and wiper— you find Bugs and any Queens that have set up shop and dump them all in the Killing Jar (not really a jar— a lockbox strapped to an EMP). Blast of magnetic radiation wipes all their data and programming. Customers are happy (they trust you can’t just turn around and sell their data) and you’re happy (they pay for your services plus you get to sell the scrap dead bugs)
Some things just don’t add up though
There’s always more Bugs. Yes they can scavenge old parts and you find them slowly picking at discarded electronics, but not enough to constitute their numbers. Companies release them in the thousands, but we remove them in the millions. We dump pounds and pounds of them at the scrapper every day and the next day there’s three times as many in their place.
Then last week your dumbass coworker drops their phone in the Killing Jar with all the Bugs, panicked, slammed the lid shut and ran the EMP.
What we expected to find when we opened it was their phone, intact but completely wiped, among a pile of dead Bugs
What we actually found was their phone perfectly intact, data and all, among a pile of dead Bugs.
Turns out these aren’t actually EMPs at all. They make a nice show, and all the Bugs turn off, but there’s not actually memory-erasing levels of magnetism happening here. The Bugs are faking it
Who sold you the Killing Jar? And who’s buying the ‘dead’ Bugs?
And it hits you— you’re not an Exterminator. You’re IT for the Bugs
