In the future, technology may return us to the past, where the movements of our clan members were anything but private. This is the theory offered up by Oxford University's Nick Bostrom, one of the world's top emerging technology experts.
"We (once) lived in small . . . tribes in which everyone knew everyone else," says the chairperson of the World Transhumanist Association -- a group of scientists and thinkers looking at technology and human capabilities.
"Now imagine that video surveillance, both by law enforcement agencies and individuals, continues to proliferate and is integrated into a network," he says. "Add to this powerful face recognition software, and it becomes possible to determine where everybody is at any given time and who they meet."
Cameras which circle city blocks, looking for faces which match national and international watch lists or a new breed of computer that can understand and interpret the raw data on countless lives, are distinct possibilities.
Current technology already allows programs to determine sex, age and home region by the sound of a voice. In the future, pinpointing "junk words" -- pronouns and prepositions tossed out by the person talking -- will enable them to become better at finding out our lies.
On their way into line, experts foresee people passing by an "artificial nose" in doorways, sniffing for traces of explosives on their scalps and clothing.
Scientists are also working on devices which would use your breath to look for diseases, or as a way to identify you. Sensors in homes may well expand from just security and fire alarms, to transmit DNA-based tests right to a doctor.
And in the future, sports playing fields may be no less than a computer platform -- the turf able to retrace a play or sense whether a player was out of bounds.
Superscanners are being discussed which could detect the stray radiation from computers, allowing officials to know when the man down the street is surfing child porn.
But while all this technology may work at the speed of thought, even the know-how we trust today is far from exact. Officials in Japan have defeated fingerprint-based biometric scanners using melted Gummi Bear candies.
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