Blindside

From Blindside

Blindside Wiki

Contents 1 About 2 Four categories of emerging technologies 3 *Faster/smaller/better... 4 *Human nature and activity 5 *Unintended consequences 6 *Radically different stuff

[edit] About

Blindside is set up to answer the question "What's going to go wrong in our e-enabled world". To make the most of the opportunities offered by emerging technologies we have to be clear about the potential problems. And we'll get a clearer view of the problems if there's open, cross-disciplinary dialogue.

So we've set up the Blindside blog to note developments and comment on progress, and this Blindside wiki to assemble a shared user guide or directory about emerging technologies and their implications for our e-enabled world.

[edit] Four categories of emerging technologies

Blindside places these emerging technologies and their implications into four broad categories:

[edit] *Faster/smaller/better...

issues thrown up by the relentless but predictable progress of Moore's Law, Metcalfe's Law etc

Here are the subjects covered in this section:

Aeronautical cabin services

APIs

Bandwidth - massive wireless and cable bandwidth to the home

CCTV

Convergence

Global Navigation Satellite Systems

Location-based services

Mobile and Pervasive Computing

Nanotechnology

Next Generation Networks

OpenDocument

Open Standards

Overlay Networks

Service-oriented architecture

Shared Service Management

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)

Ultraportable devices

[edit] *Human nature and activity

how people behave, react and deviate

Here are the subjects covered in Human Nature and Activity:

Anonymity

Automated number-plate recognition (ANPR)

APIs that change without warning

• Bad sysadmin procedures
• Bad procedures - other
• Changes to daylight saving time in the US
• Public sector databases on children
• Cybercrime
• Data breaches
• Electronic banking
• E-Voting
• Fraud Websites
• Generation C - the knowledge nomads
• Human rights (intersection with emerging technology)
• ICT Forensics
• Identity management
• Keyloggers
• NHS IT
• Non-bank payment service providers
• People and IT
• Phishing
• Phones as bugs
• Search Engine Logs
• Spam
• Technologies for Non-Repudiation
• Underground economy servers
• Unencrypted email

[edit] *Unintended consequences

Murphy's law, or 'if something can go wrong it will'

Here are the subjects covered in Unintended Consequences:

Blindside blog posts on Murphy's Law

Biometrics

• Biometrics - unencrypted
• Computing Monoculture
• DRM and its side-effects
• Environmental side-effects
• Exploding batteries
• Intellectual property law
• Mission Critical Legacy Systems
• Rampancy: AI gone wrong
• Surveillance society effects
• Windows Vista and other operating systems
• Government IT projects

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[edit] *Radically different stuff

new developments that break old rules and shift paradigms

Here are the subjects covered in Radically Different Stuff:

Blindside blog posts on Radically different stuff

• DNA terrorism
• On demand computing (ODC)
• Grid Computing
• Optical Computing
• Quantum Computing
• Semantic Web
• Self-reproducing technologies: the "GRINs"

- *Geno-

- *Robo-

- *Info-

- *Nano-

• Social media
• User-generated content
• Virtualisation
• Virtual worlds

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For now the wiki content is open to edit without formalities, and we'll leave it like that unless or until it becomes a problem. So if you have ideas, opinions or a good source of information on the types of subject covered by Blindside please add it to our growing list of Information Sources.

There's a list of Academic Experts working on the issues we identify; let's add any relevant practitioners and experts from other disciplines.

And here's a list of Stuff worth noting we haven't yet decided where to put.