That is a specific example. Here is an equally specific counter: imagine many-eyes viewing a sudden gaybashing about to take place and quickly notifying the police to stop the violent act. The result of pervasive public cameras would indeed have social ramifications, and a nice warm effect on that individuals continuing well-being and life. Finally, why would you use an example of someone doing something private in public? The fact this individual is in public already opens the possibility of them being exposed... I think public surveillance is here to stay due to technological advancement, and I want to make sure it is an advancement which is available to EVERYONE - not just some shadowy few. Meh, I'm not motivated enought to make any stronger arguments, but was fun talking with you about this.

FTA:

I've actually thought that open and accessible cameras in public are a good idea - so long as they are accessible by the public. To me this would be akin to the many-eyes philosophy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus's_Law

I think you are making the point that a richer Virtual Reality environment can bring one closer to, or perhaps even exceed, the experience and benefits of real-life meetings. I agree in theory.

At this time it seems that the number of things that a virtual meeting has over a person-to-person or physical meeting are limited, and apparently less in quantity or quality than physical meetings (I will not enumerate them #TODO two-column pro-con list of current virtual vs. physical meetings).

I think there is theoretically more things that a virtual meeting COULD offer, but the technology is not yet there.

A very weak, but simple analogy: It took a while before the majority of overseas travel was done by aircraft.

(lazy users love AC)

What could possibly go right?

Gold Goo?

I mean why do we assume that something we create, if run out of our control, will be destructive? I imagine it is because the machines we have built in the past have always needed a human to tell them what to do - they have had little or no 'brains'. These dumb machines and creations if left to their own devices will run off the track, go haywire or explode. Humans have always been needed to channel the energies of these creations.

But now we have self-driving cars.

I think our robots will escape our control one day just as not so long ago we escaped the kings'. So I suspect that a future of self-creating machines will be more evolutionary than revolutionary and that there will be no, or exceedingly few, beheadings.

What do you see as the ultimate destiny of the human species? Where do you think will we be in a million years?

For the majority of us, the vast majority of our day involves saying "hi", smiling, putting things in the trashbin, paying for our lunch, holding the door open for someone, thinking about hanging out with friends over the weekend and other stuff which is just plain good. We call it 'neutral', but most of it is good. So when given extra power, we tend to do good things with it...at least at first. When someone wins the lottery or gets a big bonus, they tend to throw a party and buy stuff for themselves AND their friends. Doing nice things makes us feel good. Thinking of harming others is just not pleasant for most of us. Thinking of bad things is not pleasant. I believe we do, however, spend a lot of time thinking about bad things, and so we tend to get this false feeling that everything and everyone else is bad. It's that whole opposite charges attract deal. Because people are so generally good, we have a strange attraction to generally bad things. But generally we're good.

When predicting, there are always factors of uncertainties OR unknowns. I wonder if you would be willing to recall some of your predictions and give a few examples. What I would like to know is:

What are some things you didn't (or don't) know about but which you could (or can) predict if they would (or will) happen?

What are some things you did (or do) know about but couldn't (or can't) predict if they would (or will) happen?

I guess I've asked two questions actually, but maybe you could have predicted I would do that from the comment subject ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QShvDj12xBc
"This is the concept for a 10,000 Meter ( 30,000 Foot), ballon-supported space gun.
The tube or barrel is 0.6 Meters (2 feet) in diameter, so it is intended for launching very small payloads.
It is unknown how plausable this is,.

The goal is to get above 10K meters, as the atmosphere is less than 50% as dense as sea level, thus friction should be low and momentum from accelleration up the tube or barrel should encounter less resistance."

It's such a funky concept, I know. But I think it is at least rather different than most space gun concepts. Skepticism and criticism is most welcome.

Just trying to think outside the sphere.

You've both got it completely wrong. The universe is inherently neutral, and people are neutral objects which interact via positive, negative and neutral actions.

The human species relies upon social structure for survival. Positive, negative and neutral interactions occur within and without that structure.

If too much positive occurs, the attraction for negative is increased. If too much negative, positive is attracted.

What we call 'peace' is a neutral state - but in nature there are two stabilities: static and dynamic. The USA does a great job with the dynamic stability, but it still wobbles a bit.

Static stability seems appealing then, but it comes with no growth. That is a problem because life must grow.

In other words, humans are intrinsically physical objects existing in deterministic, but unpredicable, system. Their actions are a mix of positive and negative charge, with an apparent slant (judging for examples by more laugh tracks than screaming in sitcoms and the relative rarity of killing sprees vs beer fests) towards positive. This general positive activity is the thing which (one might say ironically) causes to emerge a definite and persistent negative attraction.

The End.

The Legal Personality

And that, students, is how the space elevator was finally made.

I ( and many others ) have been thinking about balloon assisted launch systems recently.

Balloons seem like an excellent and flexible launch element which could offer a ton of altitude and avoidance of at least some friction. Have you heard of or considered this?

I love the caliber of cynics we have on slashdot! After all, skepticism is knowledge's greatest ally, but logic is it's greatest friend.

0 within 'our' reach, certainly.

But what about 'their' reach?

"The Indonesian province of West Papua is home to an estimated 44 uncontacted tribal groups.[16]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Guinea#People

Normally I try to be original in my posts, but in this case I just want to say thank you.

well ok, I want to say thank you AND that slashdot has been, to me, THE nexus of wisdom (both in abundance and lack thereof) on the vast internet world wide web 2.0 blogosphere cloud net network.

Take it easy, and thank you again for the creation of this great monolith of chaos, cosmos and wisdom.