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"The immediate problem with our meat brains is that they have no back-up. We can lose the most precious information we have from one bump on the head or stroke. You want a mind system with back-up that can access other databases."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| True-Vu Lenses (Goggles) | ||
| Lenses that are worn as goggles, allowing the user to both see and record what is being viewed. |
In the near-future world of Earth, oldsters (aka baby boomers) used electronic sun hats and True-Vu goggles to surveil young people and any other trouble makers.
The goggles would record whatever the wearer was watching, and then upload it to a secure location (in case anything happened).
| "Watching, all the time watching... goggle-eye geeks... What brought on Crat's sudden outburst was the sight of yet another babushka, glaring at them from a bench under one of the force-grown shade trees... The very moment they came into view, the old woman laid here wire-knitting aside and fixed them with the bug-eyed, opaque gape of her True-Vu lenses... "No joke, bloke," Roland replied. "Some of those new goggles've got sniffer sensors on 'em..." The stare got worse as they approached. Remi couldn't see the babushka's eyes, of course. Her True-Vu's burnished lenses didn't really have to be aimed directly at them to get a good record. Still, she jutted out her chin and faced them square on, aggressively making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted to their home unit, blocks from here, in real time. |
| Technovelgy from Earth,
by David Brin. Published by Bantam in 1990 Additional resources -
|
Brin adds these comments later in the novel:
Today, of course, you can buy binoculars that have been integrated with digital cameras, letting you take a picture of whatever you see through the lenses.
As a means of surveilling a scene, and distributing the results, compare to spotcast from The Little Things (1945) by Henry Kuttner, the chest-lens from War Veteran (1955) by Philip K. Dick, newstaper gear from Flash Crowd (1972) by Larry Niven and fido from Riders of the Purple Wage (1967) by Philip Jose Farmer.
Compare also to magic spectacles from Pygmalion's Spectacles (1935) by Stanley G. Weinbaum, video glasses from Islands in the Net (1988) by Bruce Sterling, data goggles from Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson, eyecaps from Starfish (1999) by Peter Watts, overlay specs from Halting State (2007) by Charles Stross and HUD glasses from Daemon (2009) by Daniel Suarez.
"...You can't just ban True-Vu and other tech-stuff. You can't rebottle the genie. The world had a choice. Let governments control surveillance tech ... and therefore gave a snooping monopoly to the rich and powerful ... or let everybody have it. Let everyone snoop on everyone else, including snooping the government!
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Earth
More Ideas
and Technology by David Brin
Tech news articles related to Earth
Tech news articles related to works by David Brin
True-Vu Lenses (Goggles)-related
news articles:
- PocketCaster First Live Video Webcast From Cellphone
- UK Officers Wear Brin's True-Vu Lenses
- Glasses Camera With Digital Video Recorder
- Eye-Fi Equals SD Memory Card Plus Wi-Fi
- Video Vigilantes Upload Crime Videos
- WCCTV 3G Covert Backpack - A Surveillance Vest
- Brando Spy Glassses Have Camera, Player Built-in
- GandhiCam For Blackberry Auto-Uploads Sousveillance
- U-Met Utility Helmet For First Responders
- Polaroid GL20 Video Sunglasses
- 'Police POV' Uses On-Officer Cameras
- ZionEyez HD Camera Glasses
- Lapel Cameras For LAPD Officers
- Bullied UK Student Uses Sunglass Video For Case
- Snap Specs - Snapchat Spectacles - Are Video Glasses
- Brin's 1990 Novel Earth Still Full Of Predictions
- Live Stream With Meta-Ban Multimodal Smart Glasses
| Chameleon Personalized Privacy Protection Mask |
| Spherical Police Robot Rolls In China |
| Vietnam To Have Full Biometric Transparency |
| Simple Way To Defeat AI Face Recognition |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
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'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
