Google balloons

[walkinTas]

In the Australian. "The technology will be trialled again in Australia next year, possibly in Tasmania."

Will this be the start of ubiquitous Internet in Tassie?

[Son of a Beach]

I can just imaging all the bushwalkers wandering along with heads down watching Google Track View, instead of looking at what's actually around them, and sitting at camp sites Facebook messaging all their friends at home about their leech bites and wet socks.

(could be actually useful at times I suppose, but something just 'feels' wrong about this)

[colinm]

Don't have to look down ... google glass would project the track over your field of view.

[GPSGuided]

Contrails have been implicated in part to the process of global warming. I wonder what will a few thousand glistening high altitude balloons do on that front?

[wayno]

maybe the CIA will try to get cameras installed... big brother will be able to see every dump you take....

[GPSGuided]

maybe the CIA will try to get cameras installed... big brother will be able to see every dump you take....

LOL! You just poked through their latest plot... And I wondered a while back why the US Govt was so quiet when Google's CEO went to court Kim Jong-un for more Google access in North Korea? Now we can reasonably assume it's a NSA plot to gain big data intelligence. Evil Google!

[wayno]

you wonder how many countries will shoot them down if they drift into their airspace,,, their potential to harvest data is massive especially if they can pick up cell phone calls...

[GPSGuided]

you wonder how many countries will shoot them down if they drift into their airspace,,, their potential to harvest data is massive especially if they can pick up cell phone calls...

NSA won't be happy with you!

[walkinTas]

...(could be actually useful at times I suppose, but something just 'feels' wrong about this)

Don't have to look down ... google glass would project the track over your field of view.

Ubiquitous networking will come one day but maybe not google balloons. There is enough address space in IPv6 to have many multiple IP Addresses per square metre of the earth's surface. So you could carry multiple live devices, each with there own network connection, that could do any number of things, like track your progress, or as colinm says showed the path ahead, or give commentary on the terrain/flora/fauna, statistics or any information about track usage, live weather reports, or social networking, or monitoring your health and medical conditions.... the list is only limited by your imagination.

But what I think SoB was eluding to is that we go there to get away from all of that. Maybe in the future we'll talk about off-grid walking instead of off-track walking.

Then again, maybe google street view is the future of bushwalking. You too can walk the Grand Canyon.



So I wonder how long before we see this dude on the Overland Track.

[wayno]

yup and if you need a rescue and you can't be located, all the arguments will come out "well why didnt you have your Internet device with you".... #$%@$

[walkinTas]

Go off-grid at your own risk.

[wayno]

i can remember a time when it was impossible to stay on the grid in the outback....

[colinm]

Ubiquitous networking will come one day but maybe not google balloons. There is enough address space in IPv6 to have many multiple IP Addresses per square metre of the earth's surface. So you could carry multiple live devices, each with there own network connection, that could do any number of things, like track your progress, or as colinm says showed the path ahead, or give commentary on the terrain/flora/fauna, statistics or any information about track usage, live weather reports, or social networking, or monitoring your health and medical conditions.... the list is only limited by your imagination.

But what I think SoB was eluding to is that we go there to get away from all of that. Maybe in the future we'll talk about off-grid walking instead of off-track walking.

We do? I don't know that I go there to get away from any of that.

I look at it like this: I walk with my GPS and PLB, and my carbon fibre poles, and my high tech clothing (y'know, sheds water, wicks it away from the skin, has some insecticide in the fabric) and my high tech tent (silnylon, Al arrow shaft material for poles) and my titanium stove and compressed gas, and triple layered carbon-steel mora knife, and ... shock horror my multifocal corrective prescription glasses with antiglare antiscratch photo-reactive properties, and with some codeine and paracetamol and antibiotics, and (you get the picture.)

So how much, exactly, are you going to give up? No eyeglasses? No shoes? Cody Lundine is the only guy who is truly experiencing the wilderness, 'cos his feet are in direct contact with it, unmediated by any high-tech vibram and gortex contraption?

I go there to get into wilderness, but with the bits of myself which I have inevitably given over to technology along for the ride, and completely intact.

I don't *think* it detracts from the experience, but for all I know it would have been much more meaningful if I was dressed in possum skin robe, carrying dilli bag woven from carefully processed vegetable fibre, lighting fires with two bits of carefully selected and shaped wood, carrying my polished stone chert axe tied to a wooden haft with roo tendons and vegetable glue, camping in places that my ancestors had informed me about, eating foods their technology had taught me how to catch/gather and prepare ...

In my considered opinion, to be human is to be wrapped about with technology. We are currently cyborgs, and we have always been man-machines. If the only way to truly appreciate the wild places is to sit, sans memory or voice, staring at the stars and communing with something we can neither name nor know, then I would suggest what you allude to is something humans have never really done.

By the time we have ubiquitous net, we will see it as a part of ourselves. We will end up with various augmentations embedded in our very bodies. Ask your grandkids, and their 'self' will encompass all that, and more than we can imagine now.

So ... bring on the ubiquitous net, bring on the new materials, and the telepresence, and the immersive augmented reality, and everything else.

[walkinTas]

@colinm - Take the red pill before its too late!

[colinm]

@walkinTas, The Matrix was a poor joke - human beings make terrible batteries, but quite good distributed processing elements, so they missed the plot.

If you want to know what I think is happening right now, but wrapped up and made to look like extrapolation, I recommend http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/accelerando. ... ifest.html ... good read. Also just about anything by Greg Egan.

[Clusterpod]

Greg Egan's Permutation City and Quarantine are my favourites.

But my objection to the "ubiquitous net" is the implied ownership of data that rightfully belongs to the public, merely because you've spent the money on the technology that allows you to collect it.

Google drives its mapping cars on publicly funded streets and will float its data-balloons over sovereign nations. Fantastic. So much good can come from it.

But its the private uses of public and sovereign data through corruption, cronyism and legal manipulation that are the reasons that we shouldn't just allow them to gather it.

If I get detained for questioning on the street for making photographs, and I do, then the same concerns should be applied to google glasses and balloons.

[colinm]

Yay, fellow Egan fan! He used to live in Eastwood NSW, you know.

But my objection to the "ubiquitous net" is the implied ownership of data that rightfully belongs to the public, merely because you've spent the money on the technology that allows you to collect it.

I guess it belongs to whoever collects it.

Google drives its mapping cars on publicly funded streets and will float its data-balloons over sovereign nations. Fantastic. So much good can come from it.

But its the private uses of public and sovereign data through corruption, cronyism and legal manipulation that are the reasons that we shouldn't just allow them to gather it.

Well, I think it's rather that they ought to pay their taxes so they can make use of the public domain, so carefully prepared and maintained by our sovereign action and our common-wealth.

I think everyone collectively will soon be in a position to do what Google does, so I would be loathe to restrict them, and eventually us.

If I get detained for questioning on the street for making photographs, and I do, then the same concerns should be applied to google glasses and balloons.

And to the fixed surveillance cams we see everywhere. See Surveillance Camera Man http://youtu.be/rXYgvayux-w "Oh, I'm just taking a video..."

I think you shouldn't be detained for questioning. I think you need to video the occurrences, and have it piped live to your 24/7 lawyer to ensure your civil rights aren't being infringed. As far as I know there is no expectation, at law, of privacy of the image. People detaining you without lawful excuse need to be taken out the back and tried.

[walkinTas]

The biggest problem with technology delivering in the future is greed. The richest man in the world got that way by delivering over priced technology to an over willing audience. He'd argue he was forced to overprice by US anti-trust laws, but I'll stick with the greed argument. I look forward to the Ubiquitous network and augmented reality - the day in glass world - but I wonder what we will sacrifice to get it and what price we will pay. I know families that already pay around $300 a month to be on the grid (phones, Internet, television, etc). We are already starting to see the dawn of a society divided not by class but by technology - haves and have nots.

The positive side of the equation is that consumers will shape the future - ahhh if only consumers knew they have the power to do so. ....Hang on a minute, is that a positive?

[wayno]

bill gates old man was a lawyer, he taught him how to fleece the masses for as much as humanly possible... imagine having to pay more money for putting your car onto the road every year that you paid for the car if it was brand new.....

[GPSGuided]

bill gates old man was a lawyer, he taught him how to fleece the masses for as much as humanly possible... imagine having to pay more money for putting your car onto the road every year that you paid for the car if it was brand new.....

That's not new at all. Look at all the parking meters around the CBD and all council areas. It's easy to excuse another fee out there in all aspects of our lives, not just cars.

[colinm]

For what it's worth, I have never* used Microsoft products, nor Apple products prior to iPad, and I've been a programmer for 40 years. Much as I detest the company and its products, it has always been possible to avoid them and make good use of technology, if you were pig headed enough, and valued your freedom highly enough.

(* exceptions: programming my Harmony remote, a short contract at Westpac where we used them as green-screens to access big iron.)

[GPSGuided]

For what it's worth, I have never* used Microsoft products, nor Apple products prior to iPad, and I've been a programmer for 40 years. Much as I detest the company and its products, it has always been possible to avoid them and make good use of technology, if you were pig headed enough, and valued your freedom highly enough.

Hence their successes. If it takes a programmer of 40 years experience to struggle and stay off those big brand products and finally succumb, what's the hope for the rest? They have made technology products easily usable by the average Joe.

[wayno]

well it didnt help that for a long time microsoft refused to sell their software to any computer vendor that didnt preload windows on every machine they sold.... you just couldnt buy a pc without an operating system, you had to pay for windows no shops could sell you anything with any other PC operating system unless you bought from a mac shop...

[Strider]

We are already starting to see the dawn of a society divided not by class but by technology - haves and have nots.

This is well recognised and known as the "Digital Divide". Especially in poorer countries where it is strongly dictated by level of disposable income.

[wayno]

digital divide has been around or a while. if you cant access electronic devices and use them , you're often going to be at a financial disadvantage. look at how many jobs now require computer literacy.
amazes me how computer illiterate uni grads can be, i get them at work and a lot of them have to be educated how to use them properly. even basic applications... trying to get them to understand the importance of saving their files where they are backed up and stop leaving them on their laptops....

[Ent]

Interesting idea and proves if you wait long enough old ideas like ballooning will come back into fashion. Universal access to communications is growing and it is a good thing IMHO but you are not mandated to take it, well at the moment at least. Only trouble is it will breed an industry of software greed that products will not work unless connected to the web and paying an hourly charge. But as OSM is proving there are ground swell movements fighting back. You can avoid Microsoft along with Apple and often be rewarded with more reliable and adaptable systems. Trouble is in Australia we are lazy and wedded to commercial products. For years corporate Australia was an IBM shop as now it is a Microsoft shop. In the USA and Europe alternative systems reign.

As for the software industry. It is a typical path of finding a better mouse trap, fighting against the big player's ruthless tactics and if you succeed adopting and refining the now destroyed big players ruthless legal approach while not giving a toss about the product quality. It never ceases to amaze me that the software people think it is ok to release junk and expect the users to find and pay to fix issues due to poor quality control. Then again I suppose this is the model that the USA car industry used for forty years until not even rusted on USA car buyers nowadays buy their junk.

[wayno]

I"m assuming htey are helium balloons
theres a finite supply of helium, experts are warning its being used up to rapidly, squandered in endless party balloons. so this will place more pressure on the supply of helium, can htey use any other gas that doesnt go up like the hindenburg?

[MrWalker]

I"m assuming htey are helium balloons
theres a finite supply of helium, experts are warning its being used up to rapidly, squandered in endless party balloons. so this will place more pressure on the supply of helium, can htey use any other gas that doesnt go up like the hindenburg?

The report said they were helium, but I was also concerned about the amount they would need, since they don't last a long time. Hydrogen should be much more appropriate, since no-one is riding in these balloons.

[wayno]

of they switch to hydrogen, could be fun if someone tries to shoot one down...

[Ent]

Actually shooting down a ballon is very hard. Just ask NATO. My main concern would be a rouge balloon heading into commercial airspace. Also retrieving the units.

O'well will be fun reading the reports assuming that the whole idea is not hot air.

And the historical all time winner of the Darwinian prize, aviation section, went the inventor that combined a hot air balloon with a hydrogen balloon!

Cheers