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Comment by suifbwish | Hacker News Reader

Now we can have a billion cameras everywhere that are virtually invisible. Bravo! At some point privacy invasive technologies will be so available and advanced that clothing and walls will no longer have any point other than to keep out the wind. Luckily advanced deep learning technology will be there to save us by making fact indistinguishable from fiction.

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David Brin had some interesting thoughts about this inevitability back in 1996: https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/transparentsociety1.htm...

(book was 1998 but portions were published earlier)

Reminds me of another Scifi book called "Light of Other Days" by Bob Shaw in which the story uses the idea of "slow glass": glass through which light takes years to pass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_of_Other_Days

Yes. It will happen. I bet low energy radio systems (like helios) will connect them up but that won't be for a long time or in my lifetime.

There's a fantastic sci fi book called "Metaplanetary" by Tony Daniel where he invented this and many other fantastic ideas. Imagine that there are billions of little computational nodes around you in the dust ("the grist"). Imagine sentient computer programs, who have human rights. Imagine what people would do who don't believe they are really sentient - yes, they'd torture or kill them. He has some sequels but last time I looked he hadn't published the conclusion book in a long time. He worked in IT in some area. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/116171.Metaplanetary. I'll agree with the reviews there that the book starts up a little hard to follow, but then it races away.

Metaplanetary was published in 2001? "Computational dust motes" features in "A Deepness in the sky" by Vernor Vinge which was published in 1999 so Tony Daniel didn't invent the concept. I wouldn't be surprised if the concept is even older tbh.

Good insight, thanks for reminding me of that also great book by Vernor Vinge! Anyway, Metaplanetary is one of my favorites.

It's inevitable that at some point in the future the only way to achieve true privacy will be to be completely and totally uninteresting.

This has 2 limitations; if everybody becomes less interesting at once, we will merely redefine what "not interesting means" bringing us back to square one. If one individual sets out to become the most uninteresting person ever, a beautiful paradox opens up. By doing so, he immediately becomes an object of interest. I can imagine some douglas adam-esque twist where he unwittingly gains the power to control the weather or something.

Pay a fee monthly if you want not to be traced seems much more probable. Not much unlike today when celebrities need to pay a company to buy houses for they, hiding the name of the buyer.

Join the advertising segment of completely and totally uninteresting people. The societal equivalent of the Bose-Einstein condensate.

But they still have your IP address which they can use as a signal!

An interesting idea for a sci fi novel.

Just turn off the lights.

Wouldn't a device with night vision deal with that?

And wifi

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