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- The Eye of Siri
The Eye of Siri
I’ve written a lot about the concept of Universal Daemonization and how personal assistants will be such a big part of that future.
Basically, our personal assistants (Siri, Cortana, etc.) will be our 24/7 advocates. They will be reading daemon information from everything and everyone around us, and telling us what they think we should know about the world.
This gets interesting when you add cameras and microphones to yourself—especially cameras that can see in all directions.
Now imagine that Siri, for example, can see behind you, above you, to the sides, and of course in front of you. This can be a necklace, a piece of clothing, or whatever that provides this functionality. And add microphones to the mix.
Siri is now in charge of looking out for you, and here are some of the things she’ll be doing.
She will monitor all moving objects around you (especially cars and such) to see if they’re moving at a velocity and trajectory that might harm you
Car behind you, coming fast!
She’ll listen for conversations around you, and let you know if they’re saying anything interesting.
The people to your 2’oclock are making a business deal about security technology. One of them is Scott Michaels, who’s a LinkedIn connection.
She’ll listen for tone of voice in people talking to you, and run it through all sorts of filters.
There’s a 82% chance that he’s lying to you. His voice is showing massive stress, and the facts he just gave don’t check out.
She’ll listen for problems that you’re facing, and do the research to solve them. Say you’re in a conversation with a buddy at a coffee shop about doing a security startup, and he’s throwing out numbers.
Hey, just for your information, the average VC funding for a security startup over the last 36 months is 1.9 million.
When you’re deep in conversation and someone is walking up behind you that looks sketchy, she will let you know.
Someone’s been following behind you for two blocks with a hoodie and an agitated gait. They might be getting ready to snatch and grab or something worse…
When you are doing or saying something that could be sensitive or controversial, she’ll remind you how many people/cameras/buildings are likely to be recording you right now based on your surroundings.
Hey, you might not want to talk about this here. There is a camera to your 6, in the tree, with audio capabilities, and there are three people in the area with audio capture enabled.
And this is in addition to the numerous other use cases already mentioned.
Basically, our personal assistants will be our permanent advocates. Constantly watching, parsing, and letting you know what you’ve trained it to know is important.
And when Siri can see and hear everything around you, it will give you an environmental awareness that humans have never had.
Maybe this stuff excites you. Maybe this stuff scares the crap out of you. Either way, you should get ready for it. This is the real internet of things.
Its primary impact will be personal-assistant-based augmentation of how humans interact with the world.