Wearable Computing: Bits Are as Insubstantial as the Ether, But They Tend to be Packaged in Hard Boxes. Hardware and Software Must Merge into Softwear

Fashion accessories will take on new roles, becoming some of the most important Internet access points, conveniently surrounding you in a Person-Wide Web. How better to receive audio communications than through an earring, or to send spoken messages than through your lapel? Jewelry that is blind, deaf, and dumb just isn’t earning its keep. Let’s give cuff links a job that justifies their name … And a shoe bottom makes much more sense than a laptop – to boot up, you put on your boots. When you come home, before you take off your coat, your shoes can talk to the carpet in preparation for delivery of the day’s personalized news to your glasses.

Musings on the Millennium: Five Leading Technologists Who Have Made an Impact on High-Tech Give Their Predictions on What the Future Holds

We will see access to broadband information service becoming standard, although six years may be a little early. Embedded chips in lights and appliances is coming, but for now it’s a niche phenomenon.

Being Nicholas: Nicholas Negroponte is the Most Wired Man We Know (and That’s Saying Something)

Will we one day have robots running around who used to carry our groceries but are now hurling paving stones at us? I doubt it. I don’t foresee a time when we are treated like pets by a culture of super computers that have us on invisible leashes while we are house training ourselves walking on the grass. Hans Moravec thinks that once computers are smarter than humans, we’ll retire, and computers will become even smarter. I think the issue has more to do with consciousness and volition than being smart. Machines will be smarter than people, but I don’t believe in artificial consciousness.

Being Nicholas: Nicholas Negroponte is the Most Wired Man We Know (and That’s Saying Something)

People in the lab have been working for two or three years on wearable computing, such as the BodyNet, which uses the body as a local-area network. The basic idea is to embed computing in objects that are not normally thought of as computers. By interconnecting these Things That Think, you create a little society of machines whose collective behavior is far more intelligent than any one person can be at one time.

Being Nicholas: Nicholas Negroponte is the Most Wired Man We Know (and That’s Saying Something)

The question of the bit police is a big one, and we know it’s big, because we’re watching the legal system flop around like a half-dead fish on the dock. They don’t know how to handle the new technology.

Being Nicholas: Nicholas Negroponte is the Most Wired Man We Know (and That’s Saying Something)

If there are going to be filters on the Net, they have to come from you and your family, not the government. Even if one believes they should come from the government, that would be impossible. No one can look at a bit stream and tell if it’s pornographic. There might even be two bit streams, neither of which is pornographic until they meet on your screen.

Being Nicholas: Nicholas Negroponte is the Most Wired Man We Know (and That’s Saying Something)

Privacy may be more attainable in the world of bits than in the world of atoms. But we can also lose it faster if we don’t pay attention.

Being Nicholas: Nicholas Negroponte is the Most Wired Man We Know (and That’s Saying Something)

In the process of scaling, is there a cusp, a threshold at which the Net will break down and have to be rebuilt? I think the Net is scaling very well. Because of the way it was designed, I don’t think it will come to its knees and crash. I see it as very organic in the way it’s capable of living and reproducing itself.