for ten years now we've been on our own

[gfish]

I just offhandedly mentioned how it won't be too many years until we have the bandwidth and storage to constantly upload video from where ever we are, and the processing power to do some really amazing analysis on it. All of it, every single frame. Geocoded, timestamped, indexed, searchable, linked into a constantly evolving composite of reality. Available for the rest of human history.

15 years? 10 years? Maybe not even that.

10 years ago today I had just moved into the dorms, basically the only place in the world with a wired network and highspeed internet access. Seeing URLs in commercials was starting to seem normal and instant messaging had just been invented. The family had 2 cellphones -- one in my dad's truck, one the rest of us shared (and having that many was unusual). I wouldn't get my own for another 3 years. My brand new, completely tricked out going-away-to-college computer was 166Mhz with 3G of storage. It had a 28.8k modem, a 10Mbps ethernet card and it was just shy of the bleeding edge.

Goddamn but things are starting to get interesting. And happy 10 year Seattle anniversary to me.

Comments

[book-addict.livejournal.com]

Just yesterday I heard mention of a device that will store GPS information (location & direction) associated with digital video. (And I wish I could cite something, but it was one student presentation in the midst of many, and I wasn't paying that much attention.) That sort of simultaneously-created metadata I do expect to become common. Any additional indexing, the sort we humans are needed for ... probably won't be much more common than it is today. I don't think.

I'm going to take a middle ground on the "rest of human history." If something seems to have continued value, then it'll be kept alive, in some form or another. Most digital data won't be. Unfortunately.
(Though it's always possible the next 10-15 years will bring about major changes in electronic longevity. I've never been very good at predicting the future.)

Ten years ago I was starting high school, and didn't have my own email address. How life has changed.