Of Dr. Nanorobot, Human Power Plant, Chip Implant, Eyeset, and More – My First V-blog (Prelude) Episode 4

I can be a futurist.  I see a future that our bodies will be repaired by robots of nano-scale in the comfort of our home, bulky televisions are things of the past and instead, we will have our own Eyeset (think headset).  Walking through the building entrances, office doors, and immigration checkpoints without the need of any physical identities because we will have a chip implanted inside our bodies.  Not a passive chip that tells the whole world who and where you are, but one that you can voluntarily set the privacy level.  Imagine no more forms filling in front of a counter and the customer service officer will be able to address you by name – because your name as broadcasted by your chip implant with your consent is shown up in the Eyeset she’s wearing. 

And I have more of such vision to share.  Just bear with me for a moment.

This was meant to be a nostalgic post, dedicated to the early Xers with a working title as “Of Chamber Music, 80s Computer Magazines, App on Tape, and Flash Today”.  But blogging is like a show biz.  Some titles may work, others may not.  And before I continue with my bizarre vision of the future, I wish to share with you where the idea of this post comes from and how it relates to my upcoming v-blog (that is if I’ve decided to continue writing this mini-series).

How time has changed, how time hasn’t.  Here are four random observations.

1. Closed to a century ago, the first radio show was aired.  People started to listen to music played on air.  Half a century prior to that, gramophone was made common to play recorded sound.  So what happened before 1870 in the era of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven?  If one wished to listen to the chamber music back then, I guess the only way is to listen to a live performance.  And if you were to come up to Beethoven, hand him a hearing aid, and tell him that you have a recorded copy of his Ninth Symphony with you, how would he have reacted?
2. Prior to the advent of Internet, no one would have thought that he or she could download a piece of information, rampantly copying and pasting to different places with a few clicks of a button.  Why do I say that?  As briefly mentioned in my upcoming v-blog, one memorable childhood moment that my dad and I did was to type in the programs or codes as printed on a computer magazine into our computer, line by line, character by character.  If we were careful enough with those incomprehensible codes, our computer screen would turn into some pretty evolving symmetric patterns in green pixels.
3. One decade is really not a long time, in a larger scheme of work.  But it is hard to imagine that DVD was not common back in the nineties, isn’t it?  I was an eager graduate ready to face the corporate world and in my hand, I had this installation tape.  A tape, you may ask?  That’s right.  It was a bulky one indeed.  One time, our clients flew in from France to view a demonstration of our back then state-of-art technology.  Their server in Paris dialed into our Singapore server for a connection and the sound of the dialing tone was so surreal, singing the tune of “From Paris with Love”.  Dial-up connection seems so ancient, looking back.  Anyway, our demo didn’t work initially.  We had to call our French clients back from the taxi stand after one magic touch of mine that made it worked, much like a football goal in the 93rd minute.  What did I do?  Don’t ask.  It’s technology.  When all fails, wash your hand and repeat the exact same step again.  It may work.  And I am not joking.
4. If you are curious, my upcoming v-blog is created using Flash.  It is a wonderful application that enables me to manipulate my video in a frame-by-frame, layer-by-layer manner.  Except, how time hasn’t changed.  As I spent the entire Sunday morning redoing, recreating an entirely same video from the old one that failed to be published, I felt as though I was transported back in my childhood moment with my dad and our 80s computer magazine, back in my early career days of application on tape.  Things just don’t work, for no apparent reason.  And after a few rounds of doing the same thing again and again, an unexplainable solution would emerge.  That’s technology for you; a bloody time sink; productive tools with unproductive results almost guaranteed.

How these random observations lead to my vision of the future, I shall leave it to you to connect the dots.  I love the Eyeset idea.  Think about a world with no more road signs, road advertisements, but instead, information is streamed onto your Eyeset in your native language real time, as you drive and as you walk.  Upon exercising your brain muscles – literally – detail information is shown.  Yes, turn left to the main street that leads to your destination.  But it will take you 10 minutes.  Alternative routes are shown with estimated time of arrival.  Special advertisements are lit up according to where you go and your profile.  Before you spit on the idea of advertisement, guess what?  They are the ones who are funding this entire world of virtual reality.

You don’t expect time changes everything, do you?

You think, characters will appear on the screen.  Say goodbye to computer keyboards.  And one last wild idea of mine to share with you.  I was used to walk pass a gym every working day when I headed home.  I saw athletes exercising on treadmills, on cycling machines.  Maybe like that famous sci-fi movie, humans are like batteries.  Gyms in the future will connect all these sport equipments into a power generator.  I mean, why waste the energy away?

PS. I change the timetable because the original plan was a bit too ambition.  Also, I have no sensing what the reception of this mini-series is so far.  Perhaps the theme is a bit too heaving for a twice a week rhythm.

My 1st v-Blog Mini-Series:

• Episode 1: A New, Shall I Say, Mini-Series and I’m Still Not Sure About It [Jun 8]
• Episode 2: The Coincidental Encounters and the Incidental Chain of Events That Leads to This [Jun 11]
• Episode 3: The Cycle of Learning and Sharing: Why Be a Caterpillar When You Can be a Butterfly? [Jun 15]
• Episode 4: Of Dr. Nanorobot, Human Power Plant, Chip Implant, Eyeset, and More [Jun 25]
• Episode 5: Storyboarding at 24 Frames per Second [Jul 9]
• Episode 6: Stripping My Own Song into Just Four Lines and an Orange Lit Valve That Glows Within [Jul 23]
• Episode 7: Little Mr. Sunshine: A Blog Is Not a Book Is Not a Movie [Jul 29]
• Episode 8: My First v-Blog: A History of Chips (That Matters to Me) [Jul 31]