"CopSpace sheds some light on matters of course... There's the green tree of signs sprouting over the doorway of number thirty-nine, each tag naming the legal tenants" - Charles Stross in the Halting State.
Stross the writer is a supernerd, sort of an updated version of the similarly polymathic Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon). Although he can write accessible romantic prose (such as his Merchant Prince series), Stross is most spectacular in his dense, technologically aware science fiction, like Halting State. Anyone who wants a realistic portrayal of the near tech future should read it.
That sounds a bit like someone describing how you might use Google Glass. A real-world image of an apartment building entrance, with an overlay of virtual information about the people who live there.
Today, Matt Galloway, the host of the local CBC Radio morning show in Toronto, was enthusing about Google Glass. Produced by the world's largest search company, it’s a computer device that you wear on your face like glasses, and it’s now selling for $1,500 by lottery only. Even while lusting after them, Galloway wondered aloud about what possible use Google Glass could have.
Stross, who has a degree in computer science (and one in pharmaceutical science – did I say polymathic?), used to write about Linux for a tech magazine. But he has the imagination to take us a few steps forward into a world where the virtual and the real have merged.
"When I sat down to write Halting State (circa 2005-2006), I decided to do some clean sheet extrapolation to figure out from existing industry road maps what sort of level of technology would be available by 2017 when the novel is set," said Stross in an email today.
He says this is the world where Google Glass is leading us.
In the world of Halting State, data storage is in practical terms infinite. Data is stored geographically, according to its location in the real world. Think of a Google map, where photographs of nearby locations are available by clicking on boxes that appear as an overlay on the map.
This is a real world science called Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and it is increasingly how information is stored today. The idea is that if the city wants to know how recently the water pipes on your street were updated, for instance, they look at a map-based computer system that may also show natural gas pipes, sewage pipes and electrical conduits on your street and maybe even the billing information for your house.
“CopSpace,” as it’s called in Stross’s book, “is basically a distributed geographical information system mapped onto a police intelligence database, using the glasses to provide a heads up view of local crime-related features," Stross explains.
Note EU-Digest: Ad agencies are "literally begging to get a pair." Google got so many submissions for the Glass Explorer program, in which early adopters could pay $1,500 for the chance to test out a pair, that it ended the submission period last Friday, earlier than expected.
Obviously Google Glass as it becomes more sophisticated - and it will - could be quite helpful for criminal investigations - the danger however is that it will also impact on personal freedom and privacy, which as we all know is something many corporations do not take very seriously.
Read more: Google Glass: No longer just the stuff of science fiction - Business - CBC News
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