Tomorrow Happens Read Online Free PDF

trends, each will try to change the equation, shifting things in their favor. No wonder people seem conflicted over information policy and "privacy." We need knowledge to hold others accountable, yet each of us worries that others know too much about us.

    These quandaries will only grow more intense as human cognitive powers expand in coming years. Memory will be enhanced by vast, swift databases, accessed at the speed of thought. Vision will explode in all directions as cameras grow ever-smaller, cheaper, more mobile and interconnected. In such a world, it will be foolish to depend on the ignorance of others . If they don't already know your secrets, there is a good chance someone will pierce your veils tomorrow, without you ever becoming aware of it. The best firewalls and encryptions may be bypassed by a gnat-camera in your ceiling or a whistle-blower in your back office. 1

    How can you be sure it hasn't already happened?

    The secrecy-option always had this basic flaw—that it's not robust or verifiable. Companies that pay millions to conceal knowledge will strive endlessly to plug leaks, yet gain no long-term advantage or peace of mind. Because the number ways to leak will expand geometrically as both software and the real world grow more complex. Because information is not like money or any other commodity. The cracks that it can slip through are almost infinitely small, and it can be duplicated at almost zero cost. Soon information will be like air, like the weather, and as easy to control.

    Let's take this a bit farther. Say you're walking down a street in the year 2015. Your sunglasses are also cameras. Each face you encounter is scanned and fed into a global pattern-search.

    Your glasses are also display screens. Captions seem to accompany pedestrians and passing drivers, giving names and compact bios. With an eye-flick you command a fresh view from an overhead satellite. Tapping a tooth, you retrieve in-depth data about the person in front of you, including family photos and comments posted by friends, associates . . . even enemies.

    As you stroll, you know that others see you similarly captioned, indexed, biographed.

    Sound horrific? Well, what are you going to do about it? Outlawing these tools will only keep common folk from using them. Elites—government, corporate, criminal, technical and so on—will still get these new powers of sight and memory, despite the rules. So we might as well have them too.

    Compare this future to the old villages where our ancestors lived, until quite recently. They, too, knew intimate details about everyone they met on a given day. Back then, you recognized maybe a thousand people. But we won't be limited by the capacity of organic vision and memory. Our enhanced eyes will scan ten billion fellow villagers while databases vastly supplement our recall. We'll know their reputations, and they will know ours.

    This portrayal of our near future may cause mixed feelings, even deep misgivings. Will it be the "good village" of Andy Hardy movies . . . safe, egalitarian and warmly tolerant of eccentricity? Or the bad village of Sinclair Lewis's Babbit and Main Street , where the mighty and narrow-minded suppress all deviance from a prescribed norm?

    We'd better start arguing about this now—how to make the scary parts less scary, and the good parts better—because there's not stopping the clock. The village is coming back, like it or not.

    Tools like the Internet promise new ways to empower private citizens, making them smarter consumers and voters . . . or else turning them into perfect prey for opportunists. Some foresee instant democracy—or demarchy —with millions of citizens "meeting" in virtual assemblies, then voting on issues of the day, skipping the intermediate stage of legislatures and elected officials. As in Periclean Athens, we may replace the delegated authority of a republic with rapid, direct polling of the sovereign electorate from their homes, with the