On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Nick May wrote:
> So why hasn't this brave new world happened already?
It's still too hard to publish, too hard to search, and too hard to pay.
David Brin, in his recent novel _Kiln People_, outlined an interesting
scenario. Private cameras are ubiquituous, and record constantly. All
this information, rather than going on to video tape, goes straight into
people's personal computers. It's possible to broadcast a query asking,
"Can anyone sell me footage of this particular location during this
period of time," and receive a bunch of responses indicating coverage
and price. You can then buy a copy of what interests you.
We have no infrastructure for this at the moment, because we haven't
yet enough storage and network capacity to do this. But once you can
casually mount a couple of cameras looking out on your street and
habitually record everything that goes on without worrying about how
you're going to store and back up years worth of data this way, people
will do that. At that point, if someone offers to let you--for free-join
a network that would sell your stuff to those who wanted it, perhaps you,
or your neighbour, wouldn't turn down money for no work.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
Received on Wed Feb 19 11:28:10 2003