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Seeing Two Seconds Into The Future

Science fiction writers are given permission to explore the most unlikely ideas imaginable. Consider Philip K. Dick's idea that it would be possible to have a camera that took pictures of the immediate future.

The Agfom Potent-Shot from Clans of the Alphane Moon is just such a device:

"This film I'm using - I'm sure you've run across it at CIA; it's expensive, but helpful." He explained to both Chuck and Joan. "I've just taken an Agfom potent-shot. Does that strike a chord? What I have in this camera is not a record of what you did just now but what will go on here in the next half hour..."

I ran across several examples in Computers that live two seconds in the future. It seems that while creating Apple's Vision Pro device, engineers discovered that it was possible to predict what users were just about to do:

One of the coolest results involved predicting a user was going to click on something before they actually did. That was a ton of work and something I’m proud of. Your pupil reacts before you click in part because you expect something will happen after you click. So you can create biofeedback with a user’s brain by monitoring their eye behavior, and redesigning the UI in real time to create more of this anticipatory pupil response.

Another technology that peeks into the future to find a period of relative calm is the WavePredictor by Next Ocean, which analyzes the ocean surface around a ship:

WavePredictor propagates the observed waves into the future resulting in a near future prediction of the waves arriving at the ship and the resulting ship motions.

Check out some of my previous articles on this idea:

  - Canon Wonder Camera Concept
  - 'Forever' Camera Powered By Its Own Images
  - MIT Researchers Predict The Future From Still Photos
  - GIDE AI Tools 'See Days In Advance'

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/15/2023)

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