Futures of archives and storage

In Chapter 1, we discussed definitions of the digital public space, and who and what is encompassed within it. This includes focus on the different forms of archives that make up much of the digital public space. Collections of content may be publicly accessible, or contributed to by the public, or contain data pertaining to the public collected in a variety of ways. Archives might also include physical objects which are digitally linked, through the internet of things. Public areas and experiences might also make up part of the digital public space, through digital counterparts which mediate the experiences of these places.

The novel technologies being explored as part of the internet of things may be important to the development of archives as a way to add tangibility to multidimensional digital objects and their categorisation. As discussed previously, one down side to the creation of ever more vast archives is that it becomes difficult to both find the content needed, and to navigate in a way which ‘feels’ comfortable and has physical markers for memory. Browsing a row of books on a shelf is not the same as scrolling down a list of titles on the screen. By renewing tangibility through the use of digital/physical hybrid objects, it may be possible, like the physical playlist, for future archive technologies to renew the physicality of items stored digitally. Future-based fiction offers various examples of how tangibility might provide greater functionality in manipulation of content: for example, three dimensional ‘hologrammatic’ displays that can be manipulated physically, famously portrayed in Minority Report (2002) and in diverse popular culture from Iron Man (2008) to Parks and Recreation (2015).

We can also consider how potential futures of archives might take advantage of connectedness of stored content in digital archives. This is something that is only just starting to be explored but is, potentially, the ultimate expression of the digital public space archive as conceived by the BBC: that any content which is created is added, in its entirety with linked metadata, to the national public archive and can then be accessed by anyone. This could lead to advances in creation, as well as storage and cataloguing, such as advances in transmedia storytelling, where one thread of narrative can run through many different media (such as television, websites, books and physical spaces for play) and be connected by technology which allows seamless transition and instant recall across contexts. This kind of multi-platform storytelling has been tried in the past (for example in multimedia surrounding the trilogy of films that began with The Matrix (1999)) but is generally agreed to have been of limited success to date, perhaps because transition across media is not straightforward.

Advances in distributed information sharing might also provide more direct societal benefits: healthcare is an area of significant focus for these connected information storage technologies. Medical treatment and diagnostic information already creates huge databases of information, which can be spread across many different archives. Your health data may already be shared in a database which lets any general practitioner access your records if you need treatment. A hospital might keep records of all outputs of their MRI scanner. Your insurer may keep detailed records about your family history. But extended linked archives could create significant changes in the way we approach healthcare, if they can surmount ethical challenges and provide data in a form which can be used for the benefit of individual patients and the wider society. Medopad,³ an example of a company currently trying to position itself as such a database model, is a London-based start-up which has a vision of a distributed medical database, storing patient data so it can be accessed anywhere by doctors. Their current products include a range of apps which gather data from multiple sources in a hospital (such as a heart monitor, notes that doctor takes during an examination, or an X-ray machine). This information is collated and made available to physicians or others via an iPad, or even through a heads-up display: at one point the system featured an app which integrated with Google Glass, before the platform was discontinued (Baraniuk, 2014). It can even perform basic analytical work such as flagging blood test results which might be of concern. If such technologies become a standard part of medical processes there could be significant moves forward in the treatment, diagnosis and understanding of illness and disease, particularly if artificial intelligence agents (discussed later in this chapter) contribute to drawing links from large data sets. As an example of this, one can take IBM’s machine ‘Watson’ which was developed to be able to use natural language processing to answer questions on the quiz show Jeopardy!. Watson is now being used to assist in healthcare decisions, using data mining of medical databases and patient information to provide treatment options and recommendations. These analyses might become even more powerful if linked to substantial data sets. Extensive longitudinal health data is being collected by projects such as Biobank,⁴ which has recruited 500,000 participants to provide detailed health and lifestyle information. This is intended to form a baseline measure for information on why some people develop a particular disease and others do not.

We can imagine a potential future therefore, where any medical treatment or examination you get, whether it be at home, at a hospital or with your local doctor, is recorded in a central database. This might be cross referenced with information about your lifestyle; perhaps recorded via a quantified self-device that records your heart rate, movements and sleep. As well as flagging health risks, such archives might allow trends in diagnoses and treatments among the general population to be highlighted, and even note a particular cluster of warning signs and alert you to steps that should be taken to prevent acute problems like a heart attack.

But it is important to consider all sides of the impacts that such linked archives might make. With such sensitive data, there are major ethical questions which must be satisfactorily answered. There are already concerns that if proprietary platforms like Medopad are used, it will bind health providers to potentially expensive and perhaps limited forms of archiving. If the system holds or collects data in a certain way, biases may be introduced. This might for example lead to prioritising certain types of conditions, or focusing on the output of machines that are more easily compatible with the system, at the expense of those that are more complex but potentially critical for a subset of patients. These biases might not be intentional, but a consequence of, for example, an all-male executive board making decisions about which data is critical to collect in the initial roll out of software. It is also important to consider what else might be done with the data set once it is collected and stored in such archives: who owns it, what can they do with it and what levels of consent are required? What business models are the companies producing the technology working to, and if this commercial dimension exists, can it truly be a public digital space?

As well as the future uses for the content of archives, we can also consider possible future technologies of data storage itself. Currently, archives of data and content such as these are for the most part held on networks of linked computers. But future technology might allow new forms of archiving with even greater capabilities, and this does not have to rest within traditional electronic computers. Karin Ljubič Fister and colleagues have demonstrated proof-of-concept work to store data in DNA base pairs in living plants and seeds. DNA is an excellent way of storing information, given that this is the purpose for which it is evolutionarily suited. They translated a computer programme, ‘Hello World’ into binary code, and encoded this in the four ‘letters’ of the nucleotides which make up DNA: A, C, T and G. 00 became A, 10 turned into C, 01 into G and 11 to T (Ljubič Fister, 2016). The DNA for the sequence to encode the programme was synthesised, and inserted into the genome of a tobacco plant (which are often used for plant-based genetic research). In most organisms, the genetic code that makes up the central ‘instruction book’ for the organism will be present completely in almost every cell that makes it up. Therefore, included in all of these copies of the information, among the instructions for making the tobacco plant, is the ‘Hello World’ programme. To read it, the DNA is extracted and read using standard sequencing procedures (Ljubič et al, 2014).

Although this is not what many people would consider when they talk about ‘digital technology’, it is highly digital because it involves translation into the digits of binary code. Preservation in such a living format, harnessing the mechanisms of organic replication and storage, might meet several of the challenges which are faced by silicon-based computing: such as heat generation and energy consumption, storage and durability. Data centres could be replaced by forests, taking carbon dioxide from the air rather than relying on generated electricity which most likely put it there. DNA is a very efficient data storage medium_ one gram of DNA can hold over 450 × 1018 bytes, enough to store ‘all the archives in the world in one box of seeds’ (Ljubič Fister, quoted in O’Neill, 2016). These seeds could be stored in a seed vault, and lie safely dormant for thousands of years, able to be read in the future. Or alternatively, the plants could be allowed to reproduce and pass the information generationally. Ljubič Fister speculates that handheld sequencing readers, a technology already in development, could allow you to scan a leaf and extract the information from a living plant or tree ‘with virtually no damage’. It is important to note that this storage would be, for the most part, ‘read only’ since it is difficult to change the DNA of the cells of a living organism. New gene insertion technologies such as CRISPR (Jinek et al, 2012) would allow changes to be more easily made, but even this would be on a slow timescale more suited to archive storage than data processing. DNA sequences in replicating organisms can persist for millions of years, as we can see from areas of our own genome that can be traced back to our common ancestors with other species.

There are some reasons to be cautious with this approach. Like any method of preservation which relies on copying, be it making handwritten copies of a manuscript or using a photocopier, errors can creep in. Over time, these errors (or mutations, in the case of DNA) might corrupt the original information or make it irretrievable. In the case of important DNA code for living organisms, this is avoided by having redundancy for important functions, and by the fact that so called ‘highly conserved regions’ are maintained by being necessary; mutations in these regions are likely to be fatal to the organisms. For critical information sequences to be maintained, it might be the case that these are included alongside critical conserved regions that are protected from damage. Technologies which replicate these natural safeguards will be necessary for safe long-term storage in this manner.

A different potential mechanism for different kinds of archive storage lies in the development of novel forms of computation. These include areas such as biocomputing (where living cells are used as components), or chemical computing. Another novel computer technology which is already in practical development is quantum computing. Quantum computers, rather than using ‘bits’ to store information, (which are a straightforward binary ‘on/off’ position of switches or electrical current in standard computers), use ‘qubits’. Qubits can occur in ‘superposition’ which means they can be both on and off at the same time, and thus store much larger amounts of information. Some companies already claim to have operational quantum computers, but to date they are limited in operation or require extremely specific conditions (such as very low temperatures) to function. Quantum computing is only one potential such new technology: there may be others which we are currently unable to foresee. But it is likely that some advance will lead to an increase in the capabilities of digital storage and computation. Any such breakthrough would revolutionise computation.

To date in the digital revolution we have seen rapid advancement of computing power in line with Moore’s law, which observes that that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits doubles every one to two years, and predicts that this will continue. However, one important limitation which could halt this progress is the physical movement of atoms in the transistors, which maintains an absolute minimum size of such components. If new technologies such as quantum computing overcome this barrier, then we can start to imagine implementing some of the scenarios explored below, where computation is truly embedded in our environment, or even integrated with our bodies themselves.

With such advances, the speed of cataloguing might be much increased, and the cost of storage and analysis minimised. There are many ramifications of this. Such vast computing power could lead to advances in artificial intelligence (see later in this chapter). We must therefore consider in designing the digital public space how we construct and curate our archives, bearing in mind that the technology which holds them may be something currently inconceivable. Any storage medium which is intended to provide long-term archive storage for digital public information must be sustainable, and ‘future proofed’ to be readable in the future and compatible with new technologies. We must also consider how information included in any such archive is chosen, and the biases which exist when building it.

If we are able to cognitively integrate access to external digital resources, which increasingly have large capacities and high fidelity, might be we able to get to a stage where we ‘remember’ everything and have perfect recall? Bruce Sterling (2005) suggests that if you are going to be capturing information from the environment, why not capture as much as you possibly can rather than make decisions about what is needed? This is vital because what is important to you might be different than the priorities of someone else, including a future version of yourself. The BBC for example, thought for many years that there was no reason to keep copies of transmitted television programmes, reusing the tapes and wiping many years of archive programming that is now highly sought after (many episodes of beloved programmes such as Dad’s Army and Doctor Who are lost). If you collect everything, you can be sure that what you need is most likely available. It is not just factual information from databases, or data gathered from our devices that could be captured and connected in this way, but also from our own experience. In Chapter 4 we discussed the practice of ‘lifelogging’ whereby people wear devices which record everything they experience. If this were added to a digital public space that could be accessed by anyone, we could potentially get to the point where our ‘memories’ consist not just of everything that is encoded in our biological brains (which can be subjective and unreliable) and not even just everything that we ourselves experience directly (which can be distorted by a particular perspective or attention) but multiple perspectives on multiple experiences collected from the whole of the public.

Will this mean that we no longer have the potential to ‘forget’ anything? Or will we be overwhelmed with ‘memories’ and not necessarily be able to identify things when we need them, or perhaps even distinguish the source? It is critical that any extended memory has efficient search functions; a large database of telephone numbers stored on your mobile rather than in your head is only useful if you can find the number you are looking for when you need it. In fact, our biological memories do not function in the same straightforward way as facts stored in a database: links and retrieval criteria are complex and still not fully understood, and the things that bring ‘knowledge’ or a ‘memory’ to mind are individual to every person. If a very large volume of memories were stored, it might be that certain types take ‘priority’ and are more quickly accessed, whereas others would take more effort to retrieve. Certain individuals have been studied who are described as having ‘perfect’ episodic memories, recalling every detail of everything that has happened to them. But this is usually described as a negative experience with memories becoming intrusive and uncomfortable, to the extent that Jill Price, who has such a memory, describes it as ‘agonizing’. ‘I don’t look back at the past with any distance. It’s more like experiencing everything over and over again, and those memories trigger exactly the same emotions in me. It’s like an endless, chaotic film that can completely overpower me. And there’s no stop button’ (Shafy, 2008).

Another hurdle is that for a shared memory to function in a fully integrated way with our own, we would have to be able to replicate the full experience of others including all senses, in the same way that our own experiential memories consist of sight, smell, sound and other sensory inputs. For data coming from other sources to have the same status as biological memories, it would have to replicate this ‘thick’ experience on multiple channels, including potentially the emotional impact and feelings that were evoked. This might require significant advances in technology, particularly understanding how such complex and deep memories are stored in our brains, and how they could be reproduced artificially. Again, we would also have to look at how memory retrieval on demand functions, and attempt to create a functional system for this. Rather than a technology of virtual reality, we would need one of virtual memory. It might be that this requires creating new biological memories. As portrayed in the Wachowski’s film The Matrix (1999) you might choose to ‘learn’ a particular skill by adding the memories of knowing it, directly into your brain. Although this sounds farfetched, it is not such a big step from current technology. In fact, something resembling this has been demonstrated in animal experiments, where memories from one rat were implanted into another, allowing it to solve a task it had not been trained on (Berger et al, 2011). It might end up that rather than having a personal memory, we all have access to a shared public resource, a ‘cultural memory’ in a much more concrete way than the term is currently applied to archives. However, if such technologies became commonplace, a risk is that we may find ourselves unsure whether something is what we ourselves experienced, or a ‘memory’ from an alternate source. Questions of ownership bring complexity to such an idea: who owns this data? Nobody, or everybody? This will be discussed further at the end of this chapter. It is also important to note that when we learn, we attach multiple aspects of experience to it; this would not necessarily be gained by ‘implanted’ memories and may result in a less rounded learning experience.

Having a searchable archive of shared previous experience could potentially vastly improve our creativity and innovation. Being able to instantly ‘know’ what has already been tried by others, or what has already been achieved by others, may prevent you making the same mistakes or wasting time searching for solutions to problems that have already been solved. Bruce Sterling notes with his discussion of the internet of things that if objects recorded the manner in which they were used, this might cover novel uses that were not conceived of by the designers, but could be potentially adopted by others who might find them useful (Sterling, 2005).

If this could apply to general knowledge and experience, it could significantly progress human development; information is a resource which gets bigger as it is collaboratively shared rather than smaller. By sharing information in directly available digital public space, we would be negating the need for public dissemination and publication through traditional mechanisms. Again though, this would rely on excellent search algorithms, which would need not only to be able to find an answer that was appropriate, but potentially flag something for your attention that you were not aware already existed.

There are several potential issues with connecting all our memories into one vast, public digital store. As mentioned, there are problems of search: how to make sure the ‘memories’ that you wish to access are available when you need to remember something. If this can be done for memories that are generated externally, could it also be done for those created by our own brains? Could we ‘download’ our memories to a hard drive, to be retained for later? Could we remove some that we no longer deem important, to save space for other things? And if the edges blur between what we experience ourselves and get from other people, how can we be sure what is ‘our’ memory? With the potential negative effects to ‘remembering’ everything, we may choose to integrate forms of forgetting into how we store memories. Our existing memories degrade over time, and it appears that we reinforce them by access; our memories may change over time the more we access them, and can be influenced by our emotions at the time of original encoding (Foster, 2011). With this being the case, we may find that we need a form of forgetting to keep a curated version of our memories that frame our own personality. As described in Chapter 6, Ayalon and Toch (2013) highlighted what appears to be an analogue of this in current aspects of digital public space; that people are less comfortable with sharing personal posts the older the posts become. Some of the newer social media platforms such as Snapchat are specifically time limited, aiming for an ‘in the moment’ interaction rather than long term retention, and we may find that this, rather than permanent storage, is the desired form of digital public space. As Lothian (2013) describes, much interaction is context dependent, and may suffer if this is absent; ‘ephemera’ such as posts and comments do not reflect the full reality of the context-dependent interactions. Lothian does not however argue against the archiving of ephemera, as a mode of long term preservation of digital culture. Such choices on what is and is not stored, and how and where, will be critical in the future of digital public spaces.

Futures of human evolution and experience

In Chapter 2 we discussed in detail human evolutionary history, relating it to how culture and technology are intimately intertwined. Many people, though happy to think about our evolutionary past, assume that due to technology, healthcare, and culture, humans are no longer subject to natural selection and change. This is not necessarily the case: there are many ways in which humanity as a species is still developing. Firstly, as long as we are still biological organisms which breed and collect DNA mutations, then we are still subject to natural selection. For an example of this we can look to the very recent change (in evolutionary terms) which has meant that adult humans can digest dairy products. This depends on a single mutation enabling adults to digest the protein lactose, which was still rare even in the Bronze Age (Allentoft et al, 2015). Development of this trait, and its spread through the population in Europe, has been linked to the development of farming. When people began to cultivate large mammals, it made sense to be able to digest the milk, even as adults, as a highly efficient source of food. In this way we can see that the technological revolution of farming led to evolutionary change and the spread of particular inherited traits.

As examined in Chapter 2, direct changes to behaviour and brain function due to use of the internet are likely to be at the individual cognitive rather than species level. However, it is still possible that over the longer term, certain aptitudes and characteristics could become more common in the population due to selection pressures. In considering this, it is important to remember that evolutionary selection works on very specific criteria: how many children you have, and how healthy they are. If a behaviour or trait does not affect this, it is unlikely to be preferentially passed on to a larger proportion of the population. When such changes do occur, although they can be quick in terms of the species lifetime, they are not visible except at the remove of several generations. It may well be hundreds or thousands of years before we can see the full effects of the digital information revolution on our species, similar to how the results of the dairy farming technological revolution took some time. Some changes may be incorporated more quickly, by means of ‘epigenetic’ change: these are changes not in the content of our DNA code, but which parts of it are switched on and off, and recent research has shown that via this mechanism the environmental influences on one generation can have an effect on the gene expression of the next (Teperek et al, 2016). It is suspected that these epigenetic factors can affect physiology, so that for example height and weight may be affected by stress and nutrition of your parents or even grandparents. As these changes come to be more understood, we might see that technology is also having more subtle effects.

Despite this, the fastest mechanism for change within a group is still culture and technology, which can be passed both within generations and between them. While to this point we have mostly been considering external technology objects and infrastructure, it may soon become possible to fully integrate technology into our bodies themselves, affecting us as organisms. In Chapters 2 and 3, we described how we can already consider our embodied consciousness as extended to include tools that we use to think and remember, which includes ‘wearable’ technology that reacts to our needs without requiring intentional access. As well as digital technology devices, bodily augmentation could be considered to include clothes (which help regulate our temperature), eye-glasses (that augment our vision to 20-20) and watches and timepieces (that give us an awareness of time). Smartphones, which give us access to the information resources of the internet, might also be considered in this category. But possible futures of the digital public space include ways that we might integrate technology more substantially into our biological bodies. Research in this space has been underway for many years by those who ape the ‘cyborgs’ of science fiction, by those such as Kevin Warwick⁵ (who is well known for having had an RFID array implanted into his arm) and Thad Starner (whose memory recall device was described in Chapter 4). In recent years the integration of these digital experiences is becoming more sophisticated, for example the work of colour-blind artist Neil Harbisson who has provided himself the ability to ‘hear’ colours and ‘see’ sounds, converting different frequencies of light into different notes (Jeffries, 2014). The melding of human and machine on a more bodily level has long fascinated SF writers, from The Six Million Dollar Man (1973) to the Cybermen of Doctor Who (1966).

Technology which affects our bodies might change the way we experience our environment, including physical and digital public spaces. In a similar way to the Northpaw system described in Case study 2.1, we may be able to use existing sensory input in new ways to add currently imperceptible information to our experience. As an example, the experimental system called Phantom Terrains (an addition to a standard hearing aid) allows the wearer to hear wifi signals. Frank Swain, who trialled this system, described how his already digitally-assisted hearing provides a good opportunity to add additional senses. ‘If I have to spend my life listening to an interpretative version of the world, what elements could I add? The data that surrounds me seems a good place to start’ (Swain, 2014). This integration of digital information into our sense of experience is one route to making ourselves ‘biots’ as described by Bruce Sterling; digitally enabled organisms which connect to the digital space. How would being able to listen out for areas of excellent wifi coverage, and notice immediately when you entered or left one, affect your experience of the digital public space? Or, if everyone had this ability, how would it affect infrastructure choices by business and civil planners? Would ‘quiet’ areas of low signal be sought after as refuges?

More speculatively, we might consider making our bodies and brains themselves part of the technological systems. This might include adding digital storage to our organic brain storage capacity as described above, or utilising our physical form as an aspect of display or function. This could be achieved in a variety of different ways, from silicon-based technology such as implanted computer chips, to more biologically based technologies, such as biocompatible and conductive silk spun by genetically modified silkworms (Ranner, 2013). There are already prototypes in development that, rather than being screen based, use ‘digital skin’ as a touch sensitive display for digital information (Yokota et al, 2016).

Technology might be allowed to take over certain monitoring and maintenance functions on our behalf. Forsythe et al (2005) write about software agents that monitor cognitive processes (in this case in fighter pilots) via physiological effects, and take over life-critical functions or provide assistance with certain functions as an ‘augmented cognition’ system when they detect severe human malfunctioning. If this type of technology was connected to others in the digital public space, or to information about the space itself, it could act to protect humanity on a larger scale – for example encouraging you to move away from a particular area if it were dangerous or overcrowded. This might not even have to be through alerts or other consciousness-raising means, but could act through more subtle behaviour-changing nudges. For an example of how this might function, we can look to the work of Pfeiffer et al who created a system whereby a wearable device helped pedestrians navigate by directly stimulating muscles in the leg, causing people to adjust their walking in a specific direction. They noted that: ‘In this way, actuated navigation may free cognitive resources, such that users ideally do not need to attend to the navigation task at all’ (Pfeiffer et al, 2015).

These notions of the human body as something we might build on and adapt are an important component of the movement known as transhumanism, which holds this up as an ideal to which we should aspire. The British Institute of Posthuman Studies describes the transhumanist movement as ‘the drive to fundamentally revolutionise what it means to be human by way of technological advancements’ (Brietbart & Vega, 2014). They describe three central areas of transhumanist thought which they think deserve focus: super longevity (extending life and reducing age-related diseases), super intelligence and super wellbeing. Digital public space related technologies have particular relevance to and implications for the latter two of these, since by extending our minds via a shared public information network we can extend our intelligence through cognitive augmentation (see page 206) and our wellbeing may be improved by technologies which augment and improve our public spaces and our connection to them. In this sense, our bodies and minds would themselves become part of the connected digital information space.

This kind of physical, biological integration may be facilitated by parallel technology developments which are currently underway in the field of synthetic biology. This involves creating artificial versions of biologically based systems using biotechnology and engineering. This might involve genetic engineering, or construction using biological materials on the nanoscale. For example, bacteria could be engineered to digest industrial waste, or produce necessary products. DNA and protein based ‘machines’ might be constructed which seek out and destroy cancer cells. Future implementations of synthetic biology might even involve growing organically based structural components from first principles. One can imagine futures in which digital public spaces were grown as well as built, but with equally specific design parameters.

As biological engineering technology develops further, it is possible we will be able to build such changes into our very bodies, without the need for silicon chips and metallic implants; this could potentially involve manipulation of our gene expression and giving our bodies the ability to incorporate new systems, processes and structures. New gene editing techniques such as CRISPR (see page 191) may allow editing of specific genes within humans, though there are still technological, not to mention ethical hurdles to its use in this context: the technology is not yet at the stage to be implemented in humans, nor do we currently have sufficient knowledge of gene function to effectively treat more than a handful of very specific diseases. Such techniques allow the genetic code to be specifically changed, and could facilitate incorporation of biologically based ‘machines’ which connects us to the digital public space. An even more extreme step would be to incorporate designed changes into ‘germline’ DNA, that is, that which is inherited by our children. It has been proposed that germline gene editing should be banned under worldwide ethical conventions, though this was not, as predicted, agreed at the International Summit on Human Gene Editing in December 2015. They instead stated that it would be irresponsible to proceed with such work until current ethical and safety issues have been resolved, but did not rule it out for the future (Baltimore et al, 2016). Germline editing creates ethical questions even beyond those of changing the genetic code of an individual, because it could cause changes to our species as a whole if such changes spread amongst the population, or cause irrevocable divisions between ‘posthumans’ who have these new adaptations and connectivity, and those who do not. Distribution of such technologies is important. As discussed in Chapter 1, we are already seeing a divide in the digital public space and access to it. If the digital public space becomes intertwined with our biological bodies, then, we may see the development of two distinct ‘species’ of humanity that can no longer interbreed and will become more and more separated. This will be particularly deleterious if access to these initially is based on imbalance such as wealth, or privilege.

As hybrid digital/physical organisms, the nature of our interactions in public space, both digital and physical, would change. If digital information about individuals or objects that we encounter ‘in public’ can be exchanged, sourced or recorded, then the potential anonymity and transience of public space may be changed or lost entirely. Echoing public concerns with the built-in recorders of Google Glass, consider the potential if everything you saw or heard was recorded and could be recalled with perfect clarity. We will return to the possible implications of being able to instantly transfer information between individuals in a connected public space later.

Many proponents of transhumanism are by nature utopian in their visions, describing a world in which humans are better, stronger and more intelligent. But with any such potential technologies, we must also consider the possible negative consequences of futures that take these paths. One important point to consider is that our current existence as biological entities is not inherently reliant on technology, though our culture may be. If we incorporate technology to the extent that our bodies can no longer function without it (like those now who reply on medical implants and regulation such as insulin pumps), then a disastrous collapse of technological civilisation could be fatal not just for us as individuals but also for our species. Integrated high technology such as cyborg style electrical implants, or biological, bacteria based ‘nanobots’ could be imagined to fail worldwide due to environmental disruption of an asteroid strike or major volcanic eruption, or via a geomagnetic storm from the sun which would severely disrupt electronics based technology.⁶ It might even be that malicious attacks could fatally disrupt services, in the same manner that co-ordinated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have brought down internet services worldwide. Even if disconnection is survivable, there might be psychological effects of disconnection if it becomes integrated to our sense of self: ‘And when the migration is complete, we shall increasingly feel deprived, excluded, handicapped, or poor to the point of paralysis and psychological trauma whenever we are disconnected from the infosphere, like fish out of water’ (Floridi, 2007).

There are also social risks inherent in intrinsic digital public space connection, even if it remains stable. Floridi (2007) refers to such connected humans not as biots, but as ‘inforgs’ (as opposed to cyborgs). If we digitise our existence as bodies which move through public space, and ourselves become a part of digital public space, then we must consider the privacy, ethical and other implications. As connected biots or inforgs, we may find that like the ‘spimes’ of the internet of things our entire ‘supply chain’ from birth to death becomes trackable and searchable. We will return to such challenges in the conclusion of this chapter.

Futures of environments and objects

Chapter 3 covered various different aspects of how physicality is important in the digital public space. Our physical experience is critical in relation to how we learn and interpret the world, and this applies to our interactions with others as well. Being in the same physical space as another person is still, to date, the most effective way to share and collaborate, although digital technology is providing a raft of tools which can allow varying levels of remote interaction. Virtual worlds and virtual reality have been a staple of both science fiction and futurism for many years, but current versions are still limited in what they can achieve in terms of tangibility. Until the physical environment can be seamlessly replicated virtually, it is important to mitigate for loss of physicality through other means when interacting digitally. But it may be the case, as alluded to in Chapter 3, that future technological developments can replicate the feeling of ‘really being there’ as portrayed by fictional futures such as Star Trek’s holodecks. These full sensory virtual environments are a key goal for many technology development companies and researchers, who hope that these technologies will improve and play a critical part in futures of digital public space, with a recent resurgence in virtual reality technologies such as the Oculus Rift.

But there are other potential futures which we can examine dealing with the physicality of digital interactions. In Chapter 3, we looked at telepresence, and the ways in which current technology is facilitating action at a distance through use of digital proxies. SF writers have often used for inspiration the possibilities of remote operation. An early example of this is the development of ‘waldoes’, or remotely operated reaching arms. These are used in a variety of industries from space exploration to film making, being popular for example with the Jim Henson company puppeteers. But the term originates from SF and was coined in the eponymous 1942 story ‘Waldo’ by author Robert Heinlein.

By extending this kind of remote operation to full bodies, and having two-way sensory transmission, limitations of physical locatedness might be entirely overcome. Your digital avatar would no longer be stuck in the digital space, but could also interact in the physical world. This kind of projection or bodily adaptation might be of particular interest to those who feel that their existing bodies have limitations in private or public space, either because of the unsuitability of the human body to particular tasks (like exploring the depths of the ocean) or because their own bodies have physical limitations due to disability. Many SF works have imagined controlling a remote surrogate for one’s body. Lock In by John Scalzi (2014) is an example which explores this concept, with a vision of a near-future American society in which a significant proportion of the population are entirely paralysed, and interact with the world via ‘personal transport’ devices; remotely operated humanoid bodies. The technology to realise such feats moves ever closer, with recent advances allowing volunteers with spinal cord injuries to control a robot in simple tasks in near real-time and receive sensory feedback (Thompson, 2016).

The ultimate expression of giving ourselves presence in a physical space through a digitally enabled projection of ourselves might be to experience an entirely different set of senses and thus control a different type of physical body. Again, this is a common conceit of SF, from mechanical exoskeletons often seen in Japanese manga comics, to the ‘Jaegers’ of the 2013 film Pacific Rim: enormous mechanical fighting machines controlled through direct mental control by a pair of operators. A series of SF books by Anne McCaffrey, beginning with The Ship Who Sang (2012), explores this idea, set in a future in which newborns with severe and/or life threatening physical disabilities are connected to the sensors and controls of space ships or space stations. These ‘shell people’ control the ships as if they were their ‘bodies’, experiencing the world through sensors instead of senses.

Instead of kicking feet, Helva’s neural responses started her wheels; instead of grabbing with hands, she manipulated mechanical extensions. As she matured, more and more neural synapses would be adjusted to operate other mechanisms that went into the maintenance and running of a space ship.

(McCaffrey, 2012)

In Chapter 3, we also discussed the potential of creating hybrid digital physical spaces that bring digital content out into the real world. New forms of play can be facilitated by shared technology, for example physical digital games like those investigated by Garner et al (2013), which require people to act in tandem in physical space. Some games, while remaining screen based, take specific advantage of physicality and co-location to enhance players’ experience. Artemis, and Spaceteam, both of which involve a team of players working together to pilot a space ship, are games which require communication and co-ordination of players physically. Spaceteam for example, requires four players to each read instructions on their mobile device (including physical commands such as to ‘shake’ or ‘invert’ the phone) which all players must perform together, but which are only displayed to one player. Therefore, the player who has those instructions must relay them verbally to everyone else, who can act upon them.

Another technology strand which might feature in potential futures of digital public space is augmented reality. Although the release of recent games such as Pokemon Go and its massive popularity have increased public attention on augmented reality games, the appeal is still niche and limited. In fact the augmented reality aspect is not a critical part of Pokemon Go: many people find that it functions more effectively without it, saving on battery life. It seems likely that augmented reality will not find a true foothold as a technology until it is available as an integral part of our experience rather than through screens which distract us from the ‘real world’. There are already some forays into this; Google Glass may have been an early attempt but as discussed had many failings. This type of full integration can be described more accurately as ‘mixed reality’ which incorporates virtual content into the environment in real time (Ceurstemont, 2014). It may also not just be applicable to our visual senses: a fully embodied experience must create a ‘new sensoriality’ (Verbücken, 2003) to combine with our experience of the world. Various technology companies are exploring, for example, how sound instead of sight might be a suitable medium for augmented reality, developing ‘earplugs’ that play back an augmented soundscape (Swain, 2016). This might incorporate alerts from your personal devices, or potentially information about your physical environment as you travel through it, without having to divert your attention to a screen.

Devices like these might not need to be worn all the time to have significant impacts. At first they may be adopted in specific circumstances, such as games, or to assist specialist roles such as providing information when it is not easy to get another way. For example, surgeon Steven Horng claimed use of an app on Google Glass saved the life of one of his patients in 2014. While operating, he was able to bring up details of drug interactions (in this case, which blood pressure medications were suitable for a patient with allergies), which would not otherwise have been possible in time (Baraniuk, 2014). Routine use of such apps, especially if they also included access to patient records and databases as described above, or could provide alerts without being prompted, would greatly assist in medical care and circumvent the need to pause operating to use keyboards or touchscreens and therefore ‘scrub up’ again to be ready for surgery.

Once devices are easy enough to use, and reduce enough in price that they become as ubiquitous as smartphones, why would you not wear one all the time? As technology improves, there may be options which are both comfortable and not obvious to others; ‘transparent’ design (see Chapter 9) at various levels, which could be ‘forgotten about’. Such devices might include an augmented view built into contact lenses and directly ‘beamed’ into the eye: this is technology which is already in development.⁷ The possibilities of continuous mixed reality, allowing you to choose how you view or hear the world, are seductive. Already, you can purchase selectively noise cancelling headphones that ‘filter’ the real world.⁸ If the technology allowed you, you might prefer to ‘filter’ your view, like services which block certain hashtags on twitter, so that examples of a particular thing that you do not like are covered by something else or blurred out. This personally curated digital public space might sound ideal, enabling you to, for example, use a physical ad-blocker service which covers all billboard advertisements with pictures of puppies. But there are social implications to filtering the real world. What if there was an app which blocked out homeless people? And what if a politician included such an app in their campaign material to improve your view of their city?

So far we have been concentrating mostly on technology which individuals can use to create personalised experiences of digital public spaces, or project themselves elsewhere within real space. But as we saw in Chapter 3, digital public space as a concept also includes augmentation of physical public spaces with digital technology, creating a hybrid environment. One way in which we can consider futures of augmented environments is via the internet of things, which as we have seen is leading to a significant number of connected devices in homes, workspaces and public areas. At a certain saturation point, it is possible that we will achieve a future which has been predicted for a long time by many people: that of ubiquitous computing; that our very environments themselves will become ‘smart’. Looking ahead at the consequences of such a fast moving field is dangerous: ‘extrapolating from today’s rudimentary fragments of embodied virtuality is like trying to predict the publication of Finnegans Wake shortly after having inscribed the first clay tablets’ (Weiser, 1991). However, we can examine trends in current and upcoming technology, and look at potential consequences.

The goal of much ubiquitous computing is anticipatory computing: that rather than being passive technology which is available if necessary, it works in the background to do what you need it to do before being asked, and potentially before you are even yourself aware that this is something that you need.

The thing that will happen, I believe, is that the products will be smart enough, or integrated enough, that they will be able to react to us; that the product will know what’s going on with us and will be able to do the right thing. I think that’s different from the toaster and the blender; the toaster and the blender sit there, not knowing how we are, waiting for commands. I think information appliances, highly technological appliances, will know we’re there and anticipate what we want just from the way we act.

(David Kelley, quoted in Moggridge, 2006)

We are already seeing this kind of reactivity in individual devices, for example heated gloves which are designed to maintain a steady temperature for those with circulation issues.⁹ To answer more complex needs, devices must incorporate some form of artificial intelligence. Although this sounds firmly within the realm of science fiction, basic artificial intelligence is already a key component of much existing technology, such as responsive digital assistants like Siri, and picture matching algorithms. The important distinction to make is that we are not talking about intelligence in human, broad terms (known as general intelligence, but very specific abilities to perform particular tasks. As technology is able to incorporate electronics into more types of materials and devices, these types of functions will become broader: for example, a recent development in 3D printed manufacturing means that circuitry can be printed directly onto surfaces (demonstrated on phone housing), using conductive ink, allowing huge advances in flexibility and adaptability (Hodson, 2016c). These kinds of innovations could incorporate simple electronics and sensors into products and materials that were not previously connectable.

Individual objects able to react to our needs are one thing, but what if our very environments were adaptable? One route to this is ‘smart buildings’ as touched upon in Chapter 3, which have features that are designed to meet and anticipate our needs. But these would mostly be in private spaces tailored to individuals or families. What about in public areas? With increasing miniaturisation, some suggest that we could implement what is generally referred to as ‘smart dust’ (Kahn et al, 1999). Like the RFID tags described in Chapter 3, tiny chips could be embedded in all sorts of objects, but rather than be passive tags which react when read, or even active ones which send out a particular fixed identification message, smart dust could also perform a range of functions including sensing and reporting. Sensors less than 0.1cm³ already exist which can transmit information about temperature, humidity and other environmental functions. One can imagine that these functions could be greatly expanded by future technologies, and hundreds or thousands of these devices could be deployed around your environment to provide a constantly updated stream of information.

However, there are many ethical and safety questions which must be addressed before we deploy such technologies. Data being produced constantly throughout the environment in a self-regulated way brings up many issues of surveillance and privacy as touched on in Chapter 6. If such a system is implemented it is important to consider who will have access to the data generated by such devices, and what they can do with it. This is even more the case if they have an active, not just passive role in the environment. There are already cases where connected internet of things devices have been manipulated to act as part of ‘botnets’ to undertake DDoS attacks on websites and internet infrastructure, causing major outages and security concerns. More direct effects on our environment might be possible, depending on what the devices do: for example, if ubiquitous devices can release pleasant scents or smells to accompany broadcasts, what is to prevent them being adapted, either by terrorists or even an authoritarian government, to emit toxic or behaviour-altering gases? Even in a less extreme scenario, there are waste and disposal issues to consider. If sensors or other devices are distributed as ‘dust’, they are likely to be unrecoverable. If replacement and recovery is impractical due to their wide distribution and hard to reach locations, they must either be self-powering (drawing energy from themselves or their environment) or powered from an external source that is maintained through the life of the device. Alternatively, they may have a self-limited life-span, in which case they must self-destruct in a way that does not cause polluting waste that will cause clutter and/or impact the environment. An example of the dangers of widely taken up micro technology without proper consideration of the environmental impact can be seen in the common use of so-called ‘microbeads’ in cosmetics such as facial scrubs, which are now known to cause environmental pollution due to their lack of biodegradability. Many groups are now campaigning to ban such additives, and the UK government has backed this move (BBC News, 2016).

The negative environmental effects of micro devices are even more critical when they are located not just in our environment but in our bodies as well. We must ensure that anything which is going to be introduced to the body, or could potentially be inadvertently taken internally, is not toxic and will not produce any unintended effects, such as immune reactions. Some work is developing even smaller devices, on the nano scale; not smart dust but smart molecules. ‘Scientists have started shrinking sensors from millimeters or microns in size to the nanometer scale, small enough to circulate within living bodies and to mix directly into construction materials’ (Garcia-Martinez, 2016). These connected nanosensors, as part of the ‘internet of nanothings’ might be the product of biotechnology, as described above, or might use novel non-biological materials such as graphene that have unusual electrical or mechanical properties. If these sensors were distributed throughout the environment, highly detailed maps of environmental effects, on any scale, could be developed for a range of factors including light, vibration, magnetic fields, or chemical concentrations among many others. Biological nanobots, mentioned in Case study 8.2, could act as both sensors contributing to this network, and pre-emptive treatment mechanisms to implement changes where necessary, while mechanical equivalents could act on the environment, perhaps scrubbing pollution from the air, cleaning graffiti from a wall, producing personally selected and directed music out of any surface, or repainting a wall in moments.

If technology becomes embedded in our environment to the point of invisibility, one potential future of our environments would be to hide it entirely, and return to something more closely resembling non-technological pre-industrial revolution environments. This would be particularly the case if novel forms of manufacture and distribution meant that we did not have to be close to either our places of work or places to purchase goods or services. In Chapter 3 we discussed new forms of distribution that can be facilitated by fabrication at the point of need, via 3D printers and other new forms of manufacturing. New forms of fabrication technology may allow increasingly complex objects to be produced where needed, perhaps from renewable feedstocks with materials which are adaptable on demand, created from a digital copy which can be adapted and made bespoke rather than requiring a physical original. Post-scarcity, post-industrial high technology utopias have been commonly explored in SF, from the replicators of Star Trek to ‘The Culture’ described by Iain M Banks in his eponymous series (Banks, 1987–2012). However, some have also explored the risks of distributed fabrication, for example, Rule 34 by Charles Stross features criminal activities in an age of widespread 3D printing (Stross, 2011).

It is also important that adaptable, environment affecting technology is responsive not just to a blanket ‘everyone’, but to specific needs of the individual which may change across time depending on mood, age, activity and so on. It is not enough to just profile people based on stereotypes, but any such systems must intelligently react to anticipate needs, and be able to take into account the diversity of human cultures. Therefore the design of such systems must be very carefully considered to accommodate this reactivity and diversity. As mentioned, intelligent software is a key part of such comprehensive environmental systems, but there are currently limits on the complexity of these. True general artificial intelligence is the focus of much research in a range of disciplines, from computer science to philosophy, though it is unclear if it is something that is possible for us to create. If we were to achieve an intelligent system, there are implications inherent for how we might use it. If such a system with general intelligence at the level of a human were created, could it be said to have sentience? And if it did, would we need to consider the ethical considerations of its use, and what a building might ‘feel’ about the demands we place upon it?

It may not just be artificial intelligences that we need to consider in terms of their exposure to input and rights in the connected digital public space. Combining archives, augmentation of our minds and bodies, and augmentation of our environment with ubiquitous computing could make our minds part of these systems, and an integral part of the digital public space. We will now look at potential directions and implications of this.

Futures of connectedness

In Chapter 4, we laid out the principles of the digital information space, and how our access to knowledge (and in turn how we use it) has changed in its form due to digital connectivity. This connectivity is critical for forming a true digital public space. In writing about the internet of things, Bruce Sterling identified connectedness and information access as critical factors in the difference that such systems make:

The primary advantage of an INTERNET OF THINGS is that I no longer inventory my possessions inside my own head. They’re inventoried through an automagical inventory voodoo, work done far beneath my notice by a host of machines. I no longer bother to remember where I put things. Or where I found them. Or how much they cost. And so forth. I just ask. Then I am told with instant real-time accuracy. I have an INTERNET OF THINGS with a search engine. So I no longer hunt anxiously for my missing shoes in the morning. I just Google them. As long as machines can crunch the complexities, their interfaces make my relationship to objects feel much simpler and more immediate.

(Sterling, 2005)

This idea of not needing to bother remembering where things are harks back to discussions earlier in this chapter about using external sources as a component of ‘your memory’. SF writers have long been interested in the possibilities inherent when you link access and augmented reality not just to specific functions, but to general access archives, databases and artificial intelligence so that you can harness the power of the internet while doing other things to create a fully augmented mind. Many of these scenarios use the idea of in-sight displays which can provide additional information about the scene or people you are interacting with, for example the names and biographies of the people you meet. In Marvel’s Iron Man film (2008), Tony Stark’s high-tech suit does not just provide him with superhuman strength and the ability to fly, but also connects to his artificial intelligence programme JARVIS which can provide important information into his visual display; either when asked or in anticipation of his needs. The Commonwealth Saga books by Peter F Hamilton (2004–2005) portray an intriguing version of connected digital public space which is almost ubiquitous in the population. The majority of people, except those who eschew technology, have implanted ‘transceivers’ which connect them to the web of information known as the unisphere and personal assistants called ‘e-butlers’. Many also possess ‘organic circuitry tattoos’ (OCtattoos) which may facilitate this connection or have other features such as sensors. This connectedness gives instant access to many different technologies, from augmented vision to sending email-style messages to controlling household lights and heating. One character uses her implanted technology to control a hand-glider style vehicle:

She put her hands down on the console’s i-spots, fingers curling round the grip bars; plyplastic flowed round them, securing them for what promised to be a turbulent flight. The OCtattoos on her wrists completed the link between the i-spots and her main nerve cords, interfacing her directly with the on-board array. Virtual hands appeared inside her virtual vision. Her customization had given them long slender fingers with green nails and glowing blue neon rings on every finger. A joystick materialized amid the icons, and she moved her virtual hand to grasp it. Her other hand started tapping icons, initiating one final systems check. With everything coming up green, she ordered the on-board array to deploy the wings.

(Hamilton, 2004)

As technology develops, these futuristic scenarios become less implausible. Already, gold electrode ‘tattoos’ have been developed as prototypes which can function to provide EEG (electroencephalogram) readings, giving indication of brain wave patterns (Ma et al, 2010). This is the first step towards such thought-controlled body mounted technology. In our discussion of digital archives functioning as memories, above, we discussed the potential of being able to remember things which we might currently forget, or which originate outside of our own experience. With two-way interaction via EEG reading (or an equivalent technology) our ‘thoughts’ and ‘senses’ could act like the internet, being able to draw on multiple sources of information and having it to hand whenever we need it.

Even if technology does not enable this direct connectivity to digital archives, information, and other people, learning in the digital public space could still function in a different way than currently. For example, many academic institutions and organisations are experimenting with the idea of ‘MOOCs’ (Massively Open Online Courses) which allow anyone with access to the internet to learn via online lectures and teaching materials. This flattening of training and information could lead to more democracy in education; anyone could take any training they wished, which could be delivered by world experts, rather than those who happen to be geographically or linguistically available. This still relies on openness and availability in an unbiased manner: many of the people taking these courses are still from privileged backgrounds, if only because they are the ones with available time to invest.

Rather than sharing memories and thoughts, we could instead consider sharing our mental process: distributed cognition. In Chapter 4 we discussed the significant benefits associated with sharing ‘cognitive surplus’ and the positive outcomes available through collaborative problem solving, computation across large networks, and distribution of workloads. In terms of digital public spaces for management of cities and large scale data networks, the benefits are evident: in healthcare, traffic management and other complex logistical problems, distributed information and large scale data processing can uncover emergent patterns that would not be visible with a much smaller amount of data. Fluid, changing networks can emerge and coalesce for short timescales, but through digital connectivity can wield real power; as for example the changing needs of tourists in a busy city being analysed and accommodated. But if we connect our own minds we may see specific individual benefits to this kind of data crunching. Featherstone (2009) suggests: ‘If we understand human consciousness as emergent from lower-level distributed cognitive processes, then human cognitive and sub-cognitive processes can be connected to distributed mechanical cognition’.

We may find that we become part of an augmented cognition system in which both human and machine are components. This links back to the idea of extelligence which was discussed in Chapter 2; except that rather than the sum total of human knowledge being stored externally in archives, it could be directly linked to individuals and potentially form part of a greater unified intelligence. We noted in Chapter 4 that individual human minds do not have the capacity to process the large amounts of data that we now have access to, and that this is something requiring connected digital data spaces. It also requires algorithmic processing, and potentially artificial intelligence software which can tease out the critical implications of the data. Future technologies could potentially involve artificial intelligences operating independently, in order to be able to react more quickly to emergent information than humans ever could, and then feed the processed results back to us directly. As highlighted in Chapter 7, we must be able to trust that any such decisions made on our behalf are made based on reasoning that is in our best interests, and as unbiased as possible.

Chapter 4 also discussed our lives as inhabitants of a digital information space, and how this shapes and is shaped by social constructions. If our level of interconnectedness increases further due to the introduction of new technologies and the further integration of digital public spaces into our lives, we may find that the way we conduct our sociality also changes. At the beginning of this chapter we touched on the idea that creative collaboration is affected by digital connectivity, with the example of transmedia storytelling. It is currently possible to tell broad, deep stories across many platforms, but professional media production companies often still follow a broadly traditional model of film or television as a primary channel of delivery, and other media being used for supplementary material. Paul Booth (2010) describes how a blog, even in the form of an individual post, may not act as a fixed text but rather an ever evolving shared discourse between the original entry and the comments which are appended to it. More and more, we may see these kinds of fluid ‘intratextual’ objects becoming the norm. There are now emerging instances of both production and consumption that rely on a more distributed media, and this seems likely to continue in future.

Henry Jenkins (2006) highlights how collaborative information sharing in online communities can act as a higher cognitive efficiency model. He examines communities which undertake detailed analyses of the show Survivors to uncover ‘spoilers’ and connect information to uncover facts about the production. He notes that a group working together can be far more productive than any one individual can be, and this collaborative discussion has led to a different kind of culture and expectation around such shows. A group of minds contributing to a shared problem can provide more details and connected thinking than any one individual could gather on their own. This is something that is becoming evident everywhere online, where detailed analysis can be conducted by a group extremely quickly, whether for journalistic investigation of a political voting scandal (Benkler, 2006) or unpicking of complex plotlines and hinted secrets by fans of a particular television show.¹⁰ Collective analysis and discussion online is a much speeded-up version of traditional scholarly sharing of knowledge through publication, retort and revision. The examples here show how connected behaviour can facilitate this collective thinking in a very specific set of challenges, but we can extend this into possible futures where such collective intelligence is brought to many domains and problems. If you are interested in a particular area, why not connect instantly with others, locally, nationally or globally, who may be coming up against similar questions or issues, and may have expertise that can be shared and built upon collectively? The nature of how this collaboration can occur will differ depending on whether we are looking at near futures (where it could be argued to be happening already) or more distant, speculative ones where people are linked more directly when needed, such as the direct linkage between a group of minds in the television show Sense8 (2015). Being exposed in such a way to a variety of different collaborators could also potentially be a source of greater empathy, giving us insight in to how different people think and what their concerns are.

In light of sharing our intelligence and pooling resources with others through networked communication, we might also consider there may be consequences with regards to the notion of self. Through extended self and bodily telepresence, as well as existence as a networked individual in a digital public space, we may find that the edges of what we currently perceive as individuals begin to blur. If we can extend our ‘self’ out into another physical space where it can act in real time with others, we may find that our connection to our individual bodies becomes less relevant in interactions. What consists of ‘me’: is it the biological body that I was born with? The prosthetic leg that responds to my mental commands? Or also the secondary body that I control via a digital connection and is located somewhere else?

Soraj Hongladarom discusses not only the extension of self that comes from being able to connect with non-biological technological extensors, but also with other people, suggesting that:

ubiquitous computing provides support to the idea that the self lacks a core identity in such a way that there is no actual mental or physical entity that functions directly as someone’s self. Furthermore, as many selves are able to be connected through the network, they can directly communicate with one another so that real empathy can result.

(Hongladarom, 2013)

This proposes that if ubiquitous computing technology extends the sense of self, and this technology is shared between different people, then the ‘self’ will overlap with those of others enabling this enhanced empathy. Such an all-encompassing mind to mind network, might enable a ‘global consciousness’ or ‘noosphere’¹¹ and one can envisage that in a society where you can feel and experience what happens to any other person, there would be increased motivation for peace and harmony. But purely optimistic viewpoints such as this can be risky, and other scenarios are also possible.

As we have seen several times in this chapter with descriptions of futures of digital public space technologies, we can conceive of either positive or negative versions of these scenarios depending on both their design and usage. Stupid or dangerous ideas could spread through a connected consciousness as quickly as good ones. While the idea of a distributed self, and a form of immortality, might sound beguiling, negative aspects have also been explored in fiction. An extreme scenario which could be envisaged as a future endpoint of this type of technology is described in the Imperial Radch books by Ann Leckie, which feature a form of ‘distributed self’ via networking to different physical bodies. The ruler of the empire, Anaander Mianaai, has a distributed consciousness (otherwise used only by artificial intelligences) that allows her to control multiple distant parts of her empire simultaneously, having many ‘ancillary’ clone bodies that contribute to her combined experience. The books question what might happen to individual instances of these ancillaries if they are separated from the main governing intelligence, be that human or artificial. Mianaai has an ‘argument with herself’, effectively leading to civil war. Many stories of distributed selves, or combining many minds into a whole, deal with issues of body horror associated with losing individuality and joining a ‘gestalt’. A well-known example is the Borg of Star Trek, an alien race who lose autonomy as part of the group mind. When the boundaries between individual selves blur, and one mind knows what all the others also know, can we still remain as individuals? A total digital publicness which works by removing individuality has repercussions which must be considered.

So far we have discussed shared human cognition due to connectedness, and briefly mentioned the possibilities of artificial intelligence and its effect in the digital public space. These topics are both important to a concept common to futurism, speculative design and speculative fiction, which has been called the ‘singularity’.

The ‘technological singularity’ is an idea that was initially discussed in the 1950s. First coined by Jon von Neumann, it was described by Stanislaw Ulam as a point: ‘beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue’ (Vinge, 1993). The name comes from a concept in physics, singularities being an infinitely compact point in space in which the laws of the universe cease to function, and the true nature of which cannot be described or understood; this is the hypothesised nature of a black hole. The technological singularity therefore, is a point in time where models of the future fail to give reliable answers. The idea of the technological singularity was popularised by Verner Vinge in the 1990s, and by Ray Kurzweil (2005) who linked it specifically to the idea of the emergence of superintelligence. This could be achieved by the creation of a ‘strong’ artificial intelligence smarter than humans in a range of different domains (rather than one specific task) possibly with the ability to make improvements to itself. General intelligence, which would be the necessary first step for this, is a goal which artificial intelligence researchers have sought for many years, but so far with limited success. An AI research boom in the 1970s led to predictions by leaders in the field that the development of general intelligence on a par with humans was imminent, however it became apparent soon afterwards that the leading research direction, rule based learning, was not going to achieve this. Current AI research is seeing a new resurgence based on ‘deep learning’ and neural networks, and some think it is more likely to be successful, while others predict a similar disappointment to the previous optimism (Adee, 2016). However, if an artificial intelligence model is successful, and achieves ‘human’ aspects such as creativity and innovation along with rapid processing speeds and vast data processing abilities, we may see it outstrip us as it learns to improve itself.

A common theory of what might happen in such a scenario is demonstrated in the 2013 film Her, which features a digital assistant similar to Google’s Siri, which is self-aware and appears to display sentience, and sapience. Through the course of the film, the computer intelligences develop as entities, learn about experience and love, but also work together to progress technologically to the point at which superintelligence is reached. At the end of the film, the AI programmes, having transcended human timescales of thought, join together and leave humanity behind. Such scenarios often end with abandonment by the AIs, or their revolt against us. An example of the latter is seen in the television programme Person of Interest, which features superintelligent artificial intelligences built initially to monitor behaviour across public and private spaces (via all connected devices) and prevent acts of terrorism.

An alternate version of the singularity is linked not to a wholly artificial intelligence, but the ability to enhance human cognition to a significantly higher level – intelligence amplification as opposed to artificial intelligence (Balsamo, 2011). This is a possible conclusion to the progress of connected digital space and a ubiquitous public: that our cognitive power becomes linked to the extent at which superintelligence is achieved synergistically. Such transcendence is again a popular SF topic. It is possible that such an outcome would lead to godlike attributes, which may be seen as the goal by some, for example Stefano Marzano: ‘the ultimate goal of our species is omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience: the ability to be everywhere, to do everything and to know everything’ (quoted in Stoop, 2003). This would be the truest expression of digital public space, but would irrevocably change our society.

Future challenges (ownership, privacy and bias)

As we have seen, there are many possibilities in the future of the digital public space, and therefore there are many potential issues that we must consider when designing technology which will lead us to or through these futures. In Chapters 5, 6 and 7 we looked in detail at challenges of ownership, privacy and bias which are affecting current digital public space technologies. These challenges, and others, will only become more important as we move forward into this technological revolution.

We must, for example, carefully consider the ownership implications of technologies such as the distributed fabrication described above, and connected archives that are available widely for anyone, anywhere to use. While authors such as Lawrence Lessig (2008) and Yochai Benkler (2006) have looked in detail at the legal implications of digital commons and decentralised production, and at new forms of ownership such as Creative Commons licensing, we should also consider how communities of work and production will generate information that is not only not owned by anyone, but cannot be. We are already seeing much knowledge production being done for free, from Wikipedia, to the content of our Facebook profiles, to artwork drawn and posted on Tumblr. We must consider the implications of this economy of immateriality, and create new structures for goods that are not ‘used up’ but need protections in place for compensation to the contributors. In many cases this may be as simple as giving credit for creation, and we may need to develop new forms of acknowledgment and attribution, perhaps built into the nature of digital objects using technologies like the blockchain.

Ownership in the multidimensional digital/physical hybrid space of the future must also be considered. We can see the first inklings of possible future disputes in this area demonstrated by reactions to the Pokemon Go game, where businesses and in some cases individuals are having to choose how they react to virtual monsters roaming the digital spaces which correlate to their physical property. In one reported case, a man in Massachusetts (Sheridan, 2016) noted many people visiting his house, which as a converted church was listed as a ‘place of interest’ in digital maps and thus a hub of activity in the game. He questioned whether the status of his home as a ‘gym’ would have a positive or a negative effect on property values. When ubiquitous digital space becomes an integral part of everyone’s experience of the world, will you have a say over the digital counterpart of your house or business? Or will you have to contend with businesses filling your space with advertising, or ‘digital graffiti’ making your home an eyesore? Designers who develop technology for these digital spaces must consider the ramifications for interaction in all dimensions which they cross, including that of the physical.

It is also important to consider the implications for self-ownership of some of the speculative technologies described above. For example, if wearable technologies and other cognitive extension equipment (such as the external memory described above) become integrated into a person’s sense of self, would malicious harm to such items be considered damage to property, or bodily harm? People may already feel personally violated or experience a sense of loss if their laptop is stolen or files irretrievably lost, how much worse will this feel if these are more fundamentally integrated to one’s sense of self? This is also interesting to consider in the context of proprietary systems such as social media platforms, which may feel like they are ‘yours’ and part of ‘yourself’ but are ultimately owned by corporations. If content may be removed at any time for violations of terms of service, who really owns it? If we are developing infrastructure that will come to be relied upon by many people living in digital public spaces, we must be socially responsible in the design of these, and take inspiration from examples of such spaces which have been co-designed by users for their needs.¹²

Issues of intrusion into what is ‘yours’ are also a factor in privacy concerns with regard to the future of the digital public space. This is of particular concern in the more extreme scenarios described in ‘Futures of connectedness’ on page 204, if the boundaries between individuals begin to break down. Some people conceive of the singularity as a utopian ideal, but just as often it is a worst-case scenario, a potential end of our species, not necessarily just as a stepping stone to something else, but an unmanageable state for humans to exist in. Being able to experience and know anything occurring means that anyone else can know and experience anything of yours – true unified digital experience would be the end of privacy, and most likely the end of individuality.

As discussed in Chapter 6, privacy is important, and part of basic human rights. A communal mindspace where information is freely shared between many people is likely to reduce individual privacy and mean that your personal thoughts and actions cannot be protected from others. We already share much of our thoughts and daily processes in online spaces via social media, but this, as discussed, is highly curated and we choose much of what makes it into our digital networks and profiles. The speculation we have been doing in this chapter involves direct sharing of all experiences and thoughts in a shared public space: what could in effect be called telepathy or mind reading, and of which it may be more difficult to control the boundaries. This has been explored as much in fantasy fiction as it has in science fiction, and the implications thereof discussed. One example is the practice of ‘Legilimency’ in the Harry Potter novels, which allows one person to look into the thoughts and memories of another. This is portrayed as dangerous skill, often used for harm, which is invasive and must be protected against because it reveals things that people would rather not be known. By contrast, the protagonists in the Young Wizards series by Diane Duane share thoughts freely and speak with each other mind to mind. But the benefits of privacy are also highlighted as important. One of the characters is given justification as to why she is losing the ability to directly hear the thoughts of her friend as they grow closer: ‘Intimacy is meaningless without barriers to overcome and to lower’ (Duane, 2001).

We can also consider how misadventure or malicious intent might damage such a system. Computer viruses and malware can infect connected computers and be shared via communication methods such as email, and also public shared spaces such as social media. If our ‘minds’, be that our biological brains or simply the digital stores that we choose to use as our memories, can become infected by such viruses, will we find that these might spread and affect our brain? One can also imagine a scenario where a software virus is constructed which removes or adds particular memories to the shared archive, or to individuals (which in some scenarios might be the same thing).

As mentioned above, individuality, and privacy, require barriers. Thus even if we were to upload ourselves to computers we must, if we value these things, remain as individuals. To reference Diane Duane’s work again, such an argument is given to a superintelligence on why it should split itself into discrete individual personalities: ‘But again and again and again. A thousand of you to share every memory with, and each one able to see it differently… and everyone else’ll see it better when the one who sees it differently tells all the others about it’ (Duane, 2001). Without the ability to discuss and compare, our experience will be diminished. However, it is possible to take advantage of closeness and connectivity while still retaining individuality and privacy, for example one might conceive of augmented environments which can adjust your level of information sharing dependent on the level of familiarity and trust, perhaps based on information from the connected devices of others.

The degree to which our words and actions persist may, as described in Chapter 6, affect how private they are. Viktor Mayer-Schonberger (2007) suggests that in a world where ‘our words and actions may be perceived years later and taken out of context, the lack of forgetting may prompt us to speak less freely and openly’. However, anecdotally at least, this does not appear to be the case as yet. The persistence of online discourse still results in people being embarrassed or discomfited by things they posted earlier, even when they at the time had full realisation that these were ‘permanent’ records. Perhaps this is because their attitudes and levels of comfort with such things have changed, or because of an assumption that ‘privacy in obscurity’ means that their words will never be found, and will never become relevant again in the mass of content that is produced constantly. As discussed in Chapter 6, there are also issues of awareness in terms of who has access when the presence of ‘invisible’ viewers may be forgotten. Two possible future outcomes of this new reality may result: we may see more of a shift in future to such guarding of speech online; or alternatively technology may be designed to include safeguards to more closely replicate the real-world ‘privacy’ of being able to speak ‘off the record’. Such safeguards may provide more awareness of who is reading our words (or be able to in future). If trends of persistence and lack of security continue, this will be necessary to retain our ability to negotiate, collaborate and create.

Many writers considering the future use extremes of privacy; either utopian ideals (that privacy is no longer necessary because we are all part of the shared noosphere), or dystopian cautionary tales. Current political momentum, from the UK’s ‘Snooper’s Charter’ IP bill, to increasing surveillance and governmental control, means that the latter can often be set in the near future. In Chapter 6 we highlighted examples such as Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, in which gait recognition cameras are common, yet commonly circumvented. The novel also features heavy use of ‘arphids’ (RFID embedded items) which are used for tracking movement of objects, and by extension the people that carry them. These too are foiled in their intended use by, for example, people exchanging train passes. (Doctorow, 2008). We must consider similar ways in which aspects of digital public spaces may be circumvented if they are not providing the services or provisions that particular sections of society want. If this pushback is by only a limited proportion of the population, this may be challenging and we must consider the reasons, which may be variously virtuous or harmful to society in general. If the majority of people are positive or apathetic about a technology, it may be because the minority who oppose it have negative intentions in mind, or it may be that they are an oppressed minority who have different needs from the majority. Or they may even be campaigning for freedoms which the majority do not realise they are losing because it does not directly impact their daily lives.

Another example of this is developments using predictive technology to prevent crime, which is familiar from speculative fiction scenarios such as Minority Report, but is being developed as a real consequence of connected technologies. Data sources such as emails, texts, chat files and CCTV can be used to predict likely sites for crime and deploy increased policing accordingly. ‘PredPol’ is a system which is being adopted in the US and UK and in a similar fashion generates suggestions of areas that should be patrolled based on analysis of recorded crimes (Baraniuk, 2015). While this sounds like a legitimate use of such data for the purposes of crime reduction, one must consider not only whether the loss of privacy is worth this benefit, but also the efficacy of such policing when biases are taken into consideration. The level of false positives (crimes predicted where none occur) and false negatives (crimes which are not predicted but do occur) must be considered with any such technology, and whether conclusions drawn from this data could harm minority communities if biases in the data lead, for example, to a vicious cycle of depravation and harsh punitive measures.

As already hinted at, bias might also lead to unforeseen issues with regards to connected environments and the intelligent software which will need to manage them. If we come to expect our environments to react in anticipation of our needs, we must ensure that their reactions are appropriate, and designed in such a way as to provide equal support no matter who is using them. We might also consider that ‘intelligence’ is not necessarily a desirable quality in systems that we are expecting to serve us: we should not design systems that can get bored with their roles!

We spoke earlier about the probable necessity of implementing some kind of ‘digital forgetting’ if we are to build substantial digital memory archives, particularly those that are highly integrated with our biological memories. This also leads to questions of bias, with regard to what gets ‘remembered’ or ‘forgotten’. We may choose to curate our own memories, but what if we also have the power to shape those of others, with features such as the ‘right to be forgotten’? We must consider bias as a critical factor when implementing such features in the design of these technologies. We have already established that our biological memories are subjective. If we start using technological extensions to our memory, this will no less be the case, but it may falsely appear that because ‘everything is recorded’, that it is more objective.

If we are influenced in our reaction to places by digital overlays, for example augmented reality that lets us see and hear the world differently, we may find that this filtered version of the world is extremely subject to bias: both our own, and that imposed externally. This may be benign, unintended, or perhaps used for criminal or unethical purposes. This might be because a hacker removes your ability to see them robbing your home, or because a government prevents you from seeing negative effects of their policies. We must also consider similar effects resulting from self-imposed social biases, the filter bubble discussed in Chapter 7.

Careful design processes are needed to safeguard against negative effects of such invisibility of technological implications. We must be careful that, if we start to rely on the digital public space, and trust records that it includes more highly than we do that of individuals and their memories, that this trust is warranted and hidden biases do not lead to incorrect conclusions. This necessity to consider multiple implications of technology applies across the board, and the final chapter will discuss how we might use a design-led approach considerately in this context.

Key points

• It is almost impossible to predict the future of technology, but examining trends and looking at possible futures can give important insights.

• Using speculation, either through fiction or design, can provoke examination of important ramifications of technological progress, and shape our expectations and hopes.

• Tangibility, connectedness and analytical capabilities are important factors to consider with regard to futures of archives.

• Linked archives could deliver societal benefits but have risks in terms of bias, privacy and consent.

• New storage technologies could change the nature of archives, include novel forms of computing, such as DNA based storage, chemical or quantum computing.

• Archives which can be accessed in a cognitively integrated way can act as digital ‘memories’, and future developments might give us ‘perfect recall’.

• For extended memory to be effective it must be rapidly searchable, and not create overload.

• True shared memory of experience must be ‘thick’ and include multiple senses, associations and emotions.

• Perfecting such shared or artificial memories might make it difficult to discern the source of such memories as external or internal, and create questions around ownership.

• Being able to directly access experience and knowledge gained from others may improve creativity and innovation, but again relies on effective search.

• With retention of large amounts of digital content, it may be necessary to build in forms of ‘forgetting’.

• Humanity is still subject to biological evolution, which selects only for traits which increase reproductive success.

• Shorter term heritable traits may come about through epigenetic change, and via cultural transmission.

• Technology to augment our bodies is the subject of continual research and development, and may change the way we experience our environment.

• Future technology may also involve incorporating our body as part of technological systems.

• These biologically incorporated changes represent the notion of transhumanism, and may culminate in engineering of our species genome. This risks division between those who can and cannot access such technologies, and precariousness if our continued survival is reliant on technology.

• Future technologies may be able to achieve full sensory virtual environments.

• Telepresence, remote operation and body surrogates may allow new ways of interaction with physical spaces.

• Augmented reality may require integrated experience, perhaps utilising multiple senses, to be more widely exploited.

• Experience of the real world mediated by augmented reality technology may be subject to bias.

• Reactivity and intelligence in devices in the physical public space is a step towards ubiquitous computing.

• Reactive environments might employ smart buildings, ‘smart dust’ or technology on the nano scale.

• The safety of such systems must be considered, in terms of pollution and environmental effects, and how they might be subject to hacking and malicious intent.

• Intelligent anticipatory computing must accommodate diversity.

• Futures of connectivity may mean instant access to information as needed.

• Sharing of cognitive processes and capacity could enable distributed media production, distributed cognition, and collective intelligence brought to bear on problem solving.

• Direct linkage between individuals may have consequences for ‘selfhood’ and individuality.

• Some have predicted that the technological singularity is inevitable, with consequences for individuality, society, and humanity.

• Questions of ownership become more complex with these projected futures, including those over intangible goods and virtual spaces, and self-ownership of augmented selves.

• Risks to privacy may be introduced by technologies that make it more difficult to control and identify information boundaries.

• Future scenarios involving privacy are often utopian or dystopian extremes.

• Bias is an important factor to consider in future technologies which use algorithmic or other intelligence systems to take actions that affect society, or our perception or experience of the world.