The Future of Gaming

Future Planet- The Future of Gaming

The Director of the Future Planet Research Centre- David Hunter Tow, forecasts that by 2050 advances in Gaming technology will accelerate the emergence of a new form of Virtual Reality- Reality 2.0 integrated with society’s cultural, work and technological practices. It will also assist society in coping with the impact of Global Warming and other potential threats to life's survival on our future planet.

Gaming has now become a mainstream activity for all demographics- playable anywhere anytime, often for free. Simple combinatorial games such as Angry Birds and Candy Crush are now freely available via the Internet on mobile platforms, downloaded  on a PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone.  With the rapid penetration of the Internet, gaming is now a part of our everyday lives.

Now the art and science of Gaming encompasses dozens of new categories in the form of multiple overlapping genres, powerful games engines and mobile platforms, as well as AI enhanced virtual and augmented reality effects and glasses. And within each of those categories countless crossover combinations and alluring formats are evolving.

In the following analysis we will explore the major trends likely to have the biggest impact on the shaping of gaming and in the process the moulding of our future social environment.

Infinite reams have been written in gaming blogs about the pros and cons of the various specialised consoles and game-playing platforms - consoles such as PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Wii U and the new VR helmet entrants etc. Gaming has been building as a global form of entertainment for many years- advancing in popularity, sophistication and financial reach; from the earliest forms of arcade video games in the 60s to the 70s black-and-white 2D games like Pong, to the first primitive shooting games in early eighties 

Then to the more complex life-like 3D war games such as Battlefield 3 in the nineties and more recently to games of fantasy, role playing, graphic realism, story telling and mind blowing virtual reality including Avatar, Second Life and its sequel High Fidelity in the present era.

The evolution of gaming is also about the rise of the new generation of multiplayer games and powerful PCs and laptops with multicore chipsets and GPUs, based increasingly on Linux variants such as SteamOS. Now the increasing popularity of the nextgen super mobile Phones and Pads such as the Tegra K1 android tablet with advanced features set to match the full power of consoles has arrived. But the choice is still expanding exponentially, with games  increasingly cross-platform, with a common content base streamed from the Internet.

Today’s massive multiplayer Internet platforms exploit limitless Cloud capacity in the sky, capable of streaming to tens of thousands of players and onlookers simultaneously - as at the recent Twitch event Pokemon gameplay- similar to a world televised Chess championship except it's more interactive; the beginning of a new form of uber crowdgaming.

In the future games will also connect to home video screens and full 3D/UHD surround helmets, goggles and cockpits, providing similar effects in real life to the Minority Report or Star Wars Holodeck scenarios.

Of course there has also been a back reaction to this complexity - recapturing the simple joys of adolescence with countless indie mobile games on inexpensive phones, such as the previous Flappy Bird and its latest spinoff Flapmmo.com. But these still allow features such as increasing levels of difficulty, reward points and performance statistics etc.

So the world of gaming is now on a trajectory that requires it to offer ever more powerful graphics and special effects when the storyline requires it and yet more realism.

The trendline seems set for more complexity and real life emulation.

Enter physics.

Models based on the pervasive laws of physics can replicate the properties of the natural world using engines capable of generating rich 3D environments-  algorithms that mimic real world phenomena like subtle lighting and shadow effects, the dynamics of wind and rain, sky and cloud textures, the deformation of materials, collision of particles, fire and heat implosions and the movements of flocks of birds, forests and rivers.

Beyond that is the physics and chemistry of human and animal movement, skin texture and facial expressions, including seamless actions and reactions mirroring complex cognitive behavioural and psychological responses in realtime. Also utilising biofeedback- pulse rates, respiration, body temperature etc, allowing the delivery of personal immersive and customisable experience back to the player. The layers of feedback and cumulative effects can eventually threaten to disrupt the timeline momentum of a game, so their introduction has to be carefully controlled.

As the quality and complexity of online games improves, more  people spend more time playing them, until the game becomes  an intrinsic part of their lives. Interactive role playing has also become key, where the player is part of the storyline and chooses the action pathway- evolving from the early games of Battlefield Galactica, Dungeons and Dragons and SteamPunk.

Now game playing has become a mega industry, with the classic Grand Theft Auto V generating $1billion in sales within three days of release. And a new set of game experiences in - Zelda, 300: Rise of an Empire, Civilisation V, Assassin's Creed, Brave New World, UE4, Ashphalt 8, San Andrea and Anomaly 2 playing out in true HD virtual reality, using ultra VR surround helmets, devices such as Microsoft 3D Kinect motion controller and imaging system as well as the lure of realistic graphics interfaces including direct Brain to Computer and Brain to Brain cognitive Interfaces, linked to full holographic sensory surround.

So ultimately we find ourselves in the another space altogether- the realm of augmented and virtual reality. And how do we know that these realities will mark the next phase of Gaming? Because they already do.

Virtual reality in entertainment has been around a long time - in sci-fi films such as The Matrix, Tron and Avatar. But from a gaming perspective also in early prototypes such as cockpit arcade games, flight simulators and popular 3D games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft.

But now VR technology has taken a gigantic leap in the form of the Oculus Rift and Morpheus headsets and other similar technologies that allow games to be visualised in 3D in synch with head and  body movements linked to a kinetic controller. Although currently still restricted to developers, streamlined VR helmets and glasses will become a standard commodity item for game players and now the social media, selling for less than $100.

At the same time Augmented reality- allowing multiple layers of information and images and visual effects to overlay real world images  has become almost commonplace with Google Glass now leading the charge, assisting doctors, engineers and machine operators to work in dangerous or restricted environments and advertisers and marketers to target potential customers on the move with ubiquitous product messages.  

In the near future therefore it will become increasingly difficult to separate the ‘virtual’ from the 'real' - integrating game role playing with actions in real life.

As early as 2030 most of our lives will be immersed in this shared reality- linking game playing with art, entertainment, technology, science, work and daily life routines such as shopping, entertainment, social exchange and travel. Meanwhile the new world of startups is providing more creative and efficient ways of implementing everyday processes in ecommerce, the media, services and entertainment via mobile platforms and will increasingly be implemented via a games interface.

This will be accelerated by the Internet of Things or intelligent objects. The internet of objects will allow the built environment of human civilisation to be simulated and controlled via sensors and actuators allowing for cross or X-reality- the fusion of virtual and real processes, to become the norm.

Alternate realities will then surround us not only visually, but at all sensory levels- tactile, oral, taste and smell. They will also be populated by virtual life forms living within virtual societies, creating virtual communities endowed with their own sets of goals and behaviour patterns. These new realities will be multi- dimensional, operating in realtime surround simulations; increasingly inseparable from the real reality.

Artificial life or A-Life is also being created in the computer science laboratories and translated to gaming practice, based on the spontaneous computer generation of emergent behaviour of role playing avatars that mimic the dynamics of social and biological evolution. Virtual life avatars also simulate reality equipped with artificial intelligence, generating their own unique problem solving capability and supporting human needs.

By 2040 the Web will offer an all-immersive 3D environment combining elements of social networks, virtual worlds and geolocation, linked to a dense Google Earth Matrix; allowing closer interaction with friends and contacts in their daily lives and workplaces as well as workers in a remote wilderness or critical disaster area. These physical representations or models of our earth and its social environment represent mirror worlds and mirror communities.

Such communities already exist in the form of creative non-violent games such as Farmlife 2, The Sims 4 and Jurassic Park, limited only by the imagination of their creators and players; meshing with the real world of sensory information as its users navigate through their daily lives.

Prototypes of virtual worlds will then not be limited anymore to the relatively static domains of 20th century IMax cinemas, Museums and Planetariums- innovative as they may be. They will represent an emerging Metaverse of potential and realised realities- past, present and future. It’s then just a small step to create proto-reality spaces like the Star Treck Holodeck, not just for entertainment gaming but for real life enhancement and problem-solving.

By 2050 therefore gaming models will have begun the transformation into an integral part of a new human reality- Future Reality 2.0  

In hindsight it can be seen that virtual, augmented and X- realities are early phases in an ongoing evolutionary transition towards the acceptance of virtual forms as part of everyday human co-existence. In the process we have crossed the threshold into a new dimension, extending human perception and interaction; linking with ubiquitous object sensory and actuator networks based on low cost wireless and optical technologies to create mixed realities.

Such a dense networked web will help integrate physical reality with virtual computing platforms generating the ability to react to real-world events in effective autonomous fashion. This creates a revolutionary relationship between human society and the Web, with the urgent need to understand the way our behaviour and future processes will become inevitably shaped by its cyberspace evolution.

In other words the world is evolving its own electronic nervous system via a dense mesh of neural-node type networks, eventually connecting and encompassing vast numbers of objects- living and non-living on the planet and in space. It is already beginning to host an immersive 3D sensory environment that combines elements of social and virtual worlds with increasingly complex geolocation mapping applications that allow the planning and monitoring of natural and urban ecosystems; providing a powerful tool to cope with climate and political change.

The approaching climate Armageddon will be a critical accelerator in the emergence of serious problem-solving gaming technology.

Rich two-way cross-reality experiences will be the norm, capable of streaming virtual and remote phenomena into the user’s physical space, via video feeds and images uploaded from object sensors and human brain machine interfaces. But this process can also extend into the past and future, allowing real-time access to historical and future trendline data streams, vital for analysis in business and the sciences as well as education and entertainment.

The implications and potential of these virtual advances are enormous, pointing the way towards the next momentous shift in the evolution of human life and our world- a fusion of real and virtual, past present and future-

Welcome to the new game of Reality 2.0.

But gaming technology is already becoming mainstream in the world of business, education, science, sports and war planning. This is so-called serious gaming. applied to activities such as event and conflict strategy, business decision-making, education and workplace operations- skills including flight simulator training, remote exploration- using robots and drones, heavy equipment maintenance, rescue missions and disaster management- all operated remotely like an arcade or console game.

The following examples provide some insight into the application of gaming principles in these fields-

Conflict and Disaster Gaming

Conflict and disaster management involves the application of strategic planning methods by defence and service strategists to evaluate and improve methods and performance in response to case study scenario options; testing the way a plan might play out or be affected by complex and unpredictable interactions; then mitigate any exposed risks.  

Advanced gaming technologies such as the Oculus Rift/Facebook and Sony helmet and intelligent agents, assist in simulating the requisite immersive virtual reality to improve the flexibility, efficiency and quality of the decision-making involved.

Sports and Event Gaming

Gaming in the context of live sporting or entertainment events has recently received a boost using a system to provide every fan at a sporting event with a  personalised phone wifi and location app- Mobbra, allowing them to receive background content such as player interviews, game statistics and interaction with other spectators. This turns such major events into a truly interactive gaming experience.

Crossover between virtual gaming and real life skills is also being extended to select gamers as competitive racing drivers at Nissan’s GT academy of Gran Turismo, on the basis of their virtual driving skills.

Science and Educational Gaming

Research in how people learn and interact in online gaming environments can assist in designing enhanced ways for science learning- integrating gaming technologies into classrooms and research facilities.

Digital games are an example of how technology can engage thousands of participants in solving problems - including scientific discoveries.

This symbiosis has been taken to a new level through the latest use of Crowdsourcing- using gaming to exploit the support and creativity of non-experts in a variety of scientific disciplines, to help solve complex problems, through the power of many minds working in tandem with computers and the Web.

For example Phylo is a game that allows users to contribute to the science of genetics by aligning sequences of DNA, RNA and proteins to find functional similarities and learn how they have evolved over time. Humans are better at solving such visual puzzles than computers and Phylo represents molecular groups by the alignment of vertical coloured pieces on a screen. There are currently 16,000 registered users working to solve such puzzles.

Foldit is another example; a protein folding game capable of solving puzzles such as the optimum folding patterns of chains of amino acid that make up the building blocks of enzymes and proteins and cracking the code of how an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus is created. It took the gamers only three weeks to create an accurate model of the solution using virtual amino acid strings on a video screen which had defied professionals for years.

Now the next level of gaming has been reached by connecting video game players directly to a real robot controlled biochemistry lab for synthesising and testing the RNA/Amino acid sequences.

In addition a number of phone app games have been developed by physicists to help non-experts understand what goes on in a particle collider including-

LHSee, designed for players to search for the elusive Higgs particle discovered  last year at the CERN Large Hadron Particle Collider.

Another particle app- a retro-style arcade game,  guides a character Ms. Particle-Man in a quest to find the Higgs particle while navigating mazes, dodging hazards and colliding with other elementary particle.

What began as a simple pinball-like game morphed into a much richer world inhabited by characters that took the form of various subatomic particles- photons, leptons, gluons, quarks and even dark matter play starring roles.

Video games are also having an enormous impact on children at school, particularly mobile gaming- providing a sense of empowerment. But that impact is often seen as disruptive to the learning process. So the aim is now to change that perception and harness the creative potential of gaming to enhance the child’s educational experience.

By the next decade it is likely the power of the Web will be fully deployed towards this new learning paradigm based on an immersive gaming virtual reality. This will be applied for all age groups including training for adults, supporting the full range of training needs from trade apprenticeships to strategic management skills. It will become a standard function of school and university teaching and research in the near future.

Game Theory Applications

As gaming becomes more scientific in its quest for greater realism and performance in the practical application to real world problem-solving, there will be an inevitable convergence with the theory of gaming.

Game Theory is about making better decisions to maximise value in games that simulate negotiation of power or asset status between individuals or groups. The gaming is based on an understanding of the mathematical rules governing the dynamics of the process- the probabilities of potential success or failure of an action or strategy, to determine the level of risk involved in achieving an outcome.

But there are many options governing the rules of a game- cooperative or non-cooperative negotiation, the sharing or hiding of knowledge,  uncertain or incomplete information, multiple parties with different objectives, non financial goals, gaining a long or short term advantage and uncertain starting conditions and constraints etc.

Originally it was the domain of economists, used to model simple zero sum outcomes relating to economic or trade advantage, with the interaction between two parties.

But the scope of the theory has widened in recent times to include complex risk assessment in many domains-  diplomacy between nation states in international relations, climate change, food and water security impacts on populations and competition between corporations in the technology, finance, energy and resource sectors.

Gaming is therefore likely to have a major impact on helping to solve humanity’s problems in the future- as a tool for finding more ethical and sustainable solutions to its needs.

End Game

The vision of a transition to a second reality through gaming is slowly coming together, but is just the beginning of solving a series of massive interlocking technological and engineering problems.

Nothing close to this level of VR realism had ever been attempted in gaming before.

The Oculus Rift can convert computer graphic images to full VR in simplified games environments such as Doom 3 and Gears of War, linked to Kinect devices simulating movement and motion gestures in 3D; but to capture full sensory information in realtime, seamlessly integrating it with the laws of physics and biology at the same time is another matter entirely

Both the computing and bandwidth capacity needed to drive the process would have to scale up an orders of magnitude at least, leveraging the latest supercomputers and prototype quantum processors. Bandwidth capacity could be achieved by utilising the latest breakthroughs in optical fibre technology at terabit speeds allowing multiple strands of an optical data streams.

But above all, the Web would have to be much cleverer, based on breakthroughs in AI,  virtual SDN- Software Defined Neural Networks, Data Linked Architectures and Decision Engineering technologies to connect and route linked information packets to the appropriate decision nodes autonomously. This would utilise a more intelligent and sentient structure more like the human brain and a strategy optimised to gaming priorities. It would also have to incorporate a heterogeneous architecture allowing combinations of different processors such as GPUs with specialised capabilities to work seamlessly in harmony.

Such architectural advances are already on the drawing board including projects by DARPA and Google, incorporating the massive power of the next generation of superclouds and data centres, based on synchronising tens of millions of distributed decision processing nodes.

But Gaming as a paradigm is just starting to evolve into a more sophisticated form - a science which can be applied to solve scientific, business, technological and global governance problems, merging with existing AI and simulation software. It is now becoming an integral part of human culture with all human activity and innovation seen as a form of Game.

This is a pivotal moment in human history- the transition towards acceptance of virtual abstract and symbiotic forms as part of everyday human existence, in the process crossing the Rubicon into a new existence.

By 2050 this new era of a vastly extended multidimensional reality, linked directly to the senses, but still dependent on the present physical world which has evolved over the past 4.5 billion years, will be ushered in.

It will be the beginning of an adjustment to an  immersive sensory environment- a Meta-World, that will combine elements of the social and physical, using increasingly sophisticated geospatial mapping and modelling; allowing virtualisation of complex processes, objects and environments, while at the same time enabling the autonomous management of the planet’s natural and urban ecosystems in the face of pervasive global warming.

It will take the form of a gigantic Game with every person a player- intimately involved in the global decision-making process. If the transition succeeds, the reward will be enormous- a new opportunity for humanity to reset civilisation within a more ethical and peaceful framework, coupled to an enormously creative scientific and philosophical awareness; capable of neutralising global warming and moving to the next level of human social evolution.

The Future of Reality 2.0

The Director of The Future Planet Research Centre- David Hunter Tow predicts the emergence of a new reality- Reality 2.0, based on a combination of advanced Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence and the creativity of the emerging human Superorganism  by 2040, as an essential step in helping avoid the potential destruction of human civilisation.

A schism is emerging in the fabric of reality from a human perspective.

This is not a rending of the spacetime continuum, but a radical shift in the reality of human perception and existence.

On the one hand is our existing notion of reality- Reality mark 1.0,  governed by the four forces of nature- gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism, that have shaped our world since its birth four and a half billion years ago and in which we as the modern human species have evolved.

Since our civilisation took off around 15,000 ya we have harnessed many forms of energy – water, wind, steam, electricity and nuclear. At the same time we have reaped the riches of the electromagnetic spectrum, using probes of all wavelengths for communication and the exploration of our universe. This has eventually enabled us to conceive a richer reality, to expand the old limits limits and begin to throw off the shackles of Reality 1.0.

And then about fifty years ago something changed – something profound; the arrival of computers that enabled humanity to digitise, process, store and disseminate the information substrate of our world – both natural and man-made, eventually guiding it through networks to a multiplicity of destinations.

Eventually this networked information infrastructure morphed into the global Internet and its acolyte the Web, enabling the emergence of the current ubiquitous information world and a new reality- Reality 2.0.

Within this new reality things have been moving at lightning speed. Basically our civilisation is rapidly taking a new form- becoming increasingly digital. All human processes and procedures encoded as algorithms and knowledge have been systematically digitised and at the same time have become largely dependent on the Internet- the primary driver of our digital revolution.

We are in fact, through our social networks, smartphones, tablets and future glasses, watches and wearable electronics, being rapidly linked in a giant multidimensional network as one living system, co-dependent - sharing a common computing/communication resource as one organism – a Superorganism.

And now the new Superorganism is starting to flex its muscles, to create its own world, shaping it to its own needs. And our reality will never be the same again.

The major enablers of Reality 2.0 include all forms of digital  and virtual reality including-- Augmented reality, Simulated and Artificial reality as well as Artificial Life and Artificial Intelligence – all based on the power of The Intelligent Web Mark 4.0.

We may now have the genesis of a radically different Reality, but it is still immutably coupled to our original Reality 1.0, because both are governed by the same laws of physics embedded in the wider Universe.

If Reality 1.0 fails – so does Reality 2.0 and any future realities, like a set of dominos – because the laws of nature such as Thermodynamics- governing  entropy and the conservation of energy and information demand it. Our realities are small beer in the overall cosmic enterprise, centred around one small rocky planet of which there are probably millions in our galaxy, rotating around an average sized main sequence sun along with 10 billion similar others in one of 100 billion spiral galaxies in our universe, which in turn may be just one of a  trillion others capable of supporting life.

So it’s early days in our evolutionary trajectory, but already an extremely significant shift has begun for every human being.

This might suggest we are heading towards Ray Kurzweil’s fabled Singularity- an unlimited technological nirvana in which our control over the universe and its unlimited power will be itself unlimited. But reality is never that simple.

Along the way there’s been a complication- Global Warming. And global warming is about to put a giant spanner in human hubris.

Two thousand years ago there were less than 100 million homo sapiens on planet earth. One thousand years ago still less than 300 million; a hundred years ago a billion inhabitants and now the world’s population has exploded to 7 billion, heading towards 9 billion by 2050.

Our use of fossil fuels has also increased, over100 fold in the last 200 years since the industrial revolution; but particularly over the last fifty years-and that’s when things started to really get out of control. The level of carbon in our atmosphere has  now reached the apocryphal 400 parts per million, most of which has been generated by use of fossil fuels, the highest since early humans walked the earth. And still our appetite for oil and gas and coal continues to soar.

Global warming or more euphemistically Climate Change continues unabated, despite all the good works relating to renewable energy, sustainable and conservation technologies. In addition according to the latest expert analysis, we are depleting our planet’s resources such as food varieties, productive soil, fresh water, clean air, animal and plant biodiversity and many minerals, at a rate equivalent to 150% of its sustainable capacity.

There’s not much you can seriously plan for without factoring the impact of global warming into the equations and models of the future- whether it’s war or peace, food and water security, human migration, education and health, engineered  infrastructure, social institutions and democracy. But many Governments and fossil fuel producers still blandly play out scenarios which largely ignore or downplay its impact.

As a result Reality 1.0 is rapidly becoming unsustainable for human survival with the inevitable collapse of our civilisation likely to be getting very imminent by 2030; just in time for the next generation, when the cycle of growth in the major economies of the world will likely come to a grinding halt and then go backwards.

In addition, climate change together with hyperfast environmental and technological change is at risk of being amplified at the social level by The Darwin Factor or Evolutionary Thrashing

Evolutionary thrashing is the sting in the tail of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

Evolution only works when the system that is evolving, has adequate time to adapt to its changing environment; by mutating its DNA in the case of biological systems or by changing its planning and production models in the case of manmade systems such as cars, in response to its customer’s needs. Either way if the system doesn’t adapt quickly it usually dies or goes out of business- which it regularly does.

In other words, evolutionary thrashing occurs when evolution doesn’t have time to do its coping thing before the next wave of change occurs.  And if this keeps happening in accelerating mode then the system will never be able to reach an accommodation with its environment; which generally means it’s doomed. 

In the meantime on the technological front there’s no shortage of fixes for rapid fire climate variation, including new types of renewable energy and more efficient methods of utilising existing energy sources- even fossil ones.

All these fixes are largely now dependent on the ubiquitous power of the Internet/Web and here’s the problem. This jewel in the crown of our civilisation is now under heavy fire not only from trashing due to the violent tantrums of global weather, but from criminal gangs and autocratic regimes seeking to hack its vital knowledge. Without access to this massive global computational/knowledge powerhouse, increasingly globally distributed through Clouds and mobile technology, most of the R&D  and production technology driving today’s applications and services-  from engineering to manufacturing, to construction  and agriculture and communication, will falter and eventually implode.

Previous analysis in this blog has predicted the potential risks if the imbalance between the needs of society and available computational capacity widens. If global warming continues on its upward trajectory and the cost of repairing the damaged infrastructure, both physical and social, continues to escalate, eventually most of the earth’s remaining resources will be depleted just in the struggle to survive and we will be left without the means to overcome the basic problem.

It’s a vicious circle. Humans need to get global warming and cyber sabotage under control in order to avoid its capacity to trash our ecosystems and infrastructure, or else we lose the capacity to maintain the core services of our fragile civilisation. But to get the impacts of runaway warming under control and maintain our standard of living, we need to utilise every advance in technology and creative computational power at our disposal, which is primarily dependent on the Internet and World Wide Web.

So if Reality 1.0 is rapidly becoming unsustainable, how do break out of this catch 22 and transition to a better life in Reality 2.0. How do we prevent the quagmire of Reality Mark 1 from sucking the life out of our planet and us.

The answer is very carefully, using the most advanced technology and human innovation we can muster, from a meta vantage perspective.

Roman generals did the same thing. When they needed to get a true picture of the progress of battle they stood on the nearest hill not down in the chaos of the fighting.

Which brings us to the centrepiece of the Reality problem and perhaps its solution.

Firstly we have no choice in this transition as a society. Our current reality has been irredeemably damaged and is provably unsustainable. This is not our planet’s problem- it’s our mindless stewardship of it.

So our attitude has to change. There is no alternative. If we don’t reduce fossil fuel consumption a Venusian sauna climate will make life a living hell for future generations. Our economic mindset also has to change. It is locked into a perpetual growth/profit cycle which is demonstrably suicidal. So our transition to Reality 2.0 needs to be radically but delicately managed through a new meta medium and a new mindset.

This new medium or layer of social and technological change needs to act as a buffer, allowing us to remediate Reality 1.0 without being swept up in its carnage, while at the same time transitioning to a new level of cognition.

That extra layer will be a combination of advanced forms of Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence combined with human ingenuity and compassion.  

Artificial Intelligence- AI, is already embedded in thousands of processes and algorithms including – the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases, the optimisation of the design and production of artefacts - whether electronic, biological, mechanical or chemical, with the capability to become automatically more flexible through self-adaptation. AI technology is increasingly based on many processes that are innate in nature including- evolutionary algorithms, rule based cellular automata, neural networks, the human immune system and insect search and foraging techniques.

At the same time a quantum leap in the range of the Internet is about to explode through the Internet of Things in which any object equipped with an intelligent interface such as a sensor or actuator and even a brain/computer interface can be connected to the Web and managed as easily as a Personal Computer or phone.  

This will be a major step in connecting the world- our original reality, with the emerging one.

Virtual Reality is also making great strides in creating simulations of natural organisms and events from viruses to dinosaurs as well as increasingly life-like gaming, providing a potential escape hatch in the form of parallel worlds. It means we can already visit and explore the wonders of this world without impacting its sanctity. It can enhance our ability to apply intelligent solutions to simulate and  manage the weather, harness the sun’s incredible power, design exotic materials based on super-strong grapheme and invisibility optics, perform remote surgery and space station repairs, manufacture organs using 3D layering techniques, use virtual money and understand mass human behaviour through analysis of social network data. We have also started to create virtual life through the medium of cyber-agents, robotics and synthetic cells. 

In other words we are beginning to create a simulated reality of our world and life based on the power of the Web and human creativity.

By 2040 the power of Reality 2.0 will be hugely amplified by the mind power of the emerging Superorganism – the connected brain power of 8 billion cooperating humans linked to the computational capacity of a quantum Internet as well as an Internet of trillions of intelligent objects.

This may just provide the breathing space and intelligence we need to remediate the damage we have caused to our pristine planet.

But it’s very easy to forget that all this promise is contingent on the successful and ongoing reclamation of Reality 1.0 – the avoidance of a hollowed out planet. It’s not a one-off. This will remain a monumental challenge for future generations.

All our technological and social progress will be lost in the blink of an eye if destruction from an out of control planet, short term greed or ongoing conflict continues to dominate out future. 

These are not sci-fi fantasies. Humans are quite capable of destroying their future and have come perilously close to it many times in their short history. It’s basically just luck that we’re still here.

But if we can finally extract ourselves from the day to day confusion and focus on regaining the long term potential benefits of a sustainable and peaceful world, eventually our two realities will seamlessly merge and our future descendants will thank us.

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The Fuuture of Surveillance

Future Portal - The future of Surveillance

The author David Hunter Tow, predicts that by 2030 the equivalent of a global PreCognition machine will be in operation with everyone  a Person of Interest as portrayed in The Minority Report film.

The state of surveillance and reconnaissance technology and its multiple applications  is now evolving at warp speed creating unprecedented Future Shock to civilisation’s social fabric.

Surveillance is already big business- very big business and is likely to continue to expand exponentially into the foreseeable future, attracting the good, the bad and the ugliest elements of society.

The problem is that without careful controls,  the runaway consequences of such a pervasive and intrusive phenomenom is likely to be catastrophic for humanity.

The main technological and social components of the  global surveillance trendline are already emerging; woven together into a dense matrix from which there will be no easy escape.

They include-

 The Knowledge Web

The most important component is the Web/Internet itself- the core asset and artefact of our civilisation, leveraging the knowledge of our society.  

This massive information network is already evolving into something beyond society’s capacity to control- the means of generating and accessing all civilisation’s knowledge content and application. It now connects over 3 billion humans and in the near future trillions of computing devices, machines and sensors. It already allows  a dense interchange of information, expertise and ideas relating to the sciences, arts and social experience that support all aspects of human existence on planet earth.

All knowledge advances, including not just basic data, but the algorithms, processes and techniques used to processs information, are being funnelled at hyperspeed into its heart, like a giant black hole swallowing the energy of billions of suns.

And emerging from the other side just like a white hole is a whole new universe- the promise of a cornucopia of untold intellectual riches and wisdom. Giant science and social observatories are now being constructed- models containing trillions of variables to assist in forecasting the future; reducing the risks that could wipe out our world in the blink of an eye- catastrophic economic, environmental or existential collapse.

The Web itself is rapidly moving to the next level- becoming more intelligent and self-determining; adapting and learning with the computational intelligence of billions of human and cyberagent minds; rapidly taking on the characteristics of a living superorganism.

 Once encapsulated, content can be mixed and matched, processed and recycled ad infinitum just like matter, until it finally emerges in a form that in  the best scenario will benefit humanity and allow it survive and achieve its potential in the future.

But there is an alter ego- a dark side to the Internet/Web. In order to achieve this magical transformation, this perpetual knowledge generator at the heart and soul of our civilisation,  it must also become a superb surveillance machine, with intelligent sensors to act as its eyes and ears- everywhere.

The following categories of sensors are now commonly used  to support the Internet/Web

Embedded Sensors-

Sensors are incredibly important, because without them to monitor the processes and systems of our planet, including our own bodies, our wonderful chocolate factory would quickly die. It  can only operate as a supersystem if it is fed a continuous diet of up to date, relevant and reliable information.

By linking to a variety of intelligent sensors, some incorporating the distributed  ability to process signals using artificial intelligence, the Web can capture the raw material it requires to weave our social matrix and is already doing so in increasing volumes, as its appetite for problem solving expands.

Sensors therefore must therefore also evolve  to become smarter- becoming more like multi-component systems, which can now be constructed in a vast variety of forms. For example- as force and field detectors embedded in the limbs of autonomous robots, capable of working on complex tasks with humans; as clouds of tiny artificial insects or smart dust that can automatically cooperate to monitor deadly environments without risking human lives; as nano-biosensors small enough to enter and navigate human cells to keep us alive; as the instrumentation of unmanned drones capable of locking on to a target and activating a kill switch against human beings; and as road location catseyes, continuously  communicating with driverless cars to avoid accidents and gridlock.

But rapidly changing climate and social change triggered by global warming will be the main driver for this technology in the future,  requiring intelligent sensors embedded in every form of natural and man made ecosystem; allowing for constant adaptation and maintenance, utilising closed feedback loops linked to the Intelligent Web for its solutions.

Such smart sensor networks are already operating in every sphere of work and social activity including-

Maintaining engineered Infrastructure- embedded in roads, bridges, dams, pipelines, grids and power stations.

Monitoring ecosystems-  natural systems  such as-forests, rivers, water, soil,  air and energy resources providing feedback to regulatory authorities to protect their integrity and survival.

Coordinating manufacturing and logistical facilities-  factories, plants,  container centres, warehouses, ports. airports, railways, traffic systems etc to efficiently manage the manufacture and delivery of products and services.

Personalising Health - advances in smart phones  and mobile technology equipped with biosensors have opened up unlimited  opportunities to monitor and support an individual’s health needs on an unprecedented personal basis- delivering just in time interventions linked to the latest diagnostic and treatment algorithms on the Web. Also using nanosensors to track disease pathways at the cellular and molecular level.

Managing Disasters and Conflict -  protecting the security  of those living in war and conflict zones – including law enforcement precincts in cities and urban areas; using a  range of sensors to protect and monitor the security of communities and public assets. These are increasingly delivered by smartphones as well as pervasive CCTV cameras, mobile robots and in the future small agile drones.

 Satellites / Probes – Eyes in  the Sky-

Ssensor systems, involving high resolution cameras and global positioning devices attached to space based telescopes, aircraft, balloons, unmanned drones, explorers  and probes of all types are now widely used to detect the electromagnetic spectrum of the planet’s resources in most wavelengths- optical, infrared, ultra violet, radio etc. The results are used to feed data to web based or smartphone apps for analysis covering-  weather forecasts, disaster interventions, animal distribution, ecosystem health, 24 hour communications and video news footage..

.Military / Spy networks - satellites track the world’s most secret military and government installations and test sites using software that enables surveillance of the remotest areas on the planet. This information is also used for research, using images from Google Earth satellite maps to replace traditional archaeological methods; by Governments to monitor border integrity and NGOs to safeguard wildlife against poaching in protected areas. Powerful probes and remote autonomous vehicle landers are increasingly used in space exploration  to obtain fly by views of planets, moons and asteroids and in the future mining options.

Drones / UAVs – these are likely to become common in the future, sharing airspace with piloted aircraft. They are currently used for surveillance spying and kill missions, but in the future will be used for reconaissance by most governments, NGOs and private corporations.

They can monitor a range of information sources, vastly reducing the operational risk in conflict areas; allowing surveillance by sensors that can record full motion video, infrared patterns. radio and mobile phone signals. They can also refuel on remote short airstrips, extending effective air range by thousands of kilometres.

Nextgen drones will be autonomous and smaller, able to navigate and eventually make target decisions, controlled by  complex algorithms and Web feeds; eliminating human operators from the decision loop entirely.  They will be used by every type of organisation - criminal networks, private security businesses, NGOs and social activist groups, providing a variety of logistical, security, news gathering and research services.

But many legal, ethical and regulatory issues remain to be resolved before UAVs will be able to operate in lockstep with human controlled vehicles. There is now fierce pushback by the community against another method of individual privacy invasion.

Intelligent Devices

With the imminent arrival of the Internet of Everything the focus will be on every object in relation to surveillance - machines, electronic devices and systems that can communicate with other machines as well as human users will be the first objects of interest to  be caught in the net. These will include complex systems such as supersmart phones and robots as well as everyday home and office devices such as  cameras, TVs, printers, video recorders, toys,  game consoles, microwave ovens, toasters, fridges etc, all equipped with forms of embedded sensors and actuators including chipped product and ID codes. Eventually  trillions of such active objects including life forms – plants,  animals and humans- will be linked to the Internet through a variety of communication protocols including including DNA sequences and brain interfaces.

Robots of all types will be pervasive in the home,  workplace and industrial areas including- humanoids, capable of intereacting and cooperating with humans in work areas such as retail stores and factories or performing home support services- initially cleaning, food delivery, health and companion support.  They will eventually be capable of more sophisticated decision-making and autonomous operation equal to humans in every activity and finally acting in surveillance / supervisory mode.

 Social Networks /Media

Humans are also expanding their remit in the surveillance game in the form of citizen reporters, scientists and observers, using smartphones to gather information from their local environment, then feeding it through social network media.  Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter already provide feedback on the latest breaking news across the globe, particularly in entertainment, crime and disaster areas, often creating ad hoc networks to provide alternative coverage when standard communication fails as in Haiti-  offering critical on the ground suppport and impact assessment as first responders.

Phone cameras have already proved the single most important surveillance tool available to communities in times of crisis;  also a tool for democracy that has already proved crucial in capturing proof of abuse during the Arab Spring. Citizen reporters, and community activists  equipped with such devices constantly feed the Web with realtime events, capturing evidence of illegal activities and promoting events of public interest through crowdsourcing. The social media therefore provides a significant back channel in disseminating realtime information around the globe like a Mexican wave, as well as signalling emerging trends such as disease epidemics and political developments.

In addition, activist NGOs, whistleblowers and mass movements- Greenpeace, Wikileaks and Occupy all contribute to this channel, providing background monitoring and surveillance of big business and  Government corruption; a form of ethical surveillance crucial to a democracy.

 Cyber Espionage

Cyber espionage is now rife around the world. Serious cyber attacks are a daily occurrence particularly between nations such as  China, US, Russia, Britain, Iran and Israel, with the intent of covert acquisition of national secrets, Intellectual property, financial assets and personal information.

But cyber espionage is also a form of intrusive surveillance.

Current cyber malware such as Stuxnet, Flame, Duqu and Miniduke are all primarily surveillance and  reconnaissance weapons capable of performing spy missions as well as crippling vital target infrastructure. This routinely involves  copying critical screen images, websites, emails, documentation and network traffic in general.- performing extensive data mining, copying, transmitting and deleting files for espionage purposes.

The Pentagon’s Plan x is a good example of the exploding surveillance syndrome now overtaking society. It aims to create a  new surveillance and operations system to map the digital battlefield of cyberspace and  define a playbook for deploying cyberweapons. It will provide a realtime graphical rendering of this cyberworld showing ongoing operations and realtime flows of networked data around the world like a large scale computer game. This visualisation or surveillance model of cyberspace requires intensive reconaissance of both friend and foe. But it is already out of date- a model more appropriate for the sci-fi films of the nineties. It will soon be superseded by a much bigger prescence – a multi-dimensional cognitive model in which  players are linked directly to the Intelligent Web.

The US is also assembling a vast intelligence surveillance apparatus to collect information about its own citizens as well as those overseas actors perceived as terrorist risks, integrating the resources of the Department of Homeland Security, military , local police departments and FBI. In the near future this will be expanded to encompass the whole range of US and overseas allied security agencies. This machine will collate information about thousands of US citizens and residents many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing, to assist the FBI initially in its ongoing eternal and surreal war against home grown terrorism.
According to news reports there are now almost 4000 federal, state and local organisations working on domestic counterterrorism projects, following the 2001 attacks. Obviously this is  getting out of hand, making it virtually impossible to achieve any realistic goal for achieving a coordinated system.
There are also a number of legislative bills relating to Internet surveillance awaiting ratification including – SOPA, PIPA and CISPA. The  first two speak to copyright protection of content on the web threatening to close down any remotely implicated site,  which opponents say infringes on the right to privacy and freedom of access to the Web; while the third  relates to the monitoring of private citizen information or spying on the general public, in the name of investigating hypothetical cyber threats and ensuring the security of networks against cyber attack.
All three have met with fierce opposition from advocacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union  and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as ignoring the legal rights of supposed infringers and excessively intrusive and draconian.

Future Shock

While the benefits of the future Interne/Web are enormous in terms of greater knowledge leading to a higher quality of life and a safer existence for humanity, there are concurrent significant downsides which will quickly escalate, potentially  leading to a loss of control of humanity over its destiny. 
The existential risk is that transition to such an always on and pervasive entity as a global  surveillance machine, monitoring  a large proportion of the planet’s  natural, engineered and cultural environment, could  lead to a big brother society in which everyone is a person of interest.
The major disruptions noted as already emerging, relate to the inevitable erosion of citizen privacy  and equitable access to the the Internet in the name of security, with new US laws such as SOPA  and CISPA due to be enacted. These purportably aim to provide greater protection for intellectual property and personal rights but at the same time have the potential to erode democratic rights. 
In other words the beneficial potential of the Internet/Web is at risk of being subverted, emerging instead as a vast spying or surveillance machine.
But this is just the beginning of a slippery slope in human rights attrition.
The surveillance mechanisms outlined will inevitably lead to much greater personal freedoms restriction, which in turn will increase pressure for some form of predictive capacity to choke off dissent. This is likely to escalate no matter what legal safeguards are adopted.

In the paranoid world of the spy/surveillance agencies, networks will become impossibly entangled – much more so than in the current geopolitical/security maze. If there are 4000 domestic agencies in the US currently involved in covert surveillance, how many more are there internationally and how many will there be involved in the surveillance game when the cyberespionage paranoia really explodes?

Who is friend or foe when every nation and major organisation is spying on every other?
As mentioned, prediction/forecasting models are already in widespread use – and so they should be in a world threatened by global warming and economic collapse.  Projects such as the FuturICT Social Observatory, although not gaining EU funding in the immediate future will continue, monitoring vast amounts of information, searching for trends and elusive signals to save the planet.
It is good science when forecasting is applied to reduce risks to our civiliisation. But when such mechanisms abuse power by tightening control over populations it is the beginning of an unravelling of democratic standards.

Autocratic and fascist states throughout history have applied such techniques to their people, punishing political enemies and dissidents in the process. The current surveillance technologies amplify this potential for misuse a thousandfold, exploiting the Web as civilisation’s greatest asset for potential benefit, turning it instead into a quasi Surveillance/Precog machine with the capacity to predict an individual’s movements and actions.

Governments have lost the ability to solve this problem.

Even if there is the will it has become too complex.

The Future is at a tipping point- and the outcome does not look promising.