Introducing MindRDR: When Google Glass isn’t invasive enough

I’m shouting at garden gnomes, aren’t I? I offer post after pithy post warning the world about the coming cyborg Armageddon, but no one listens. Instead, we continue to march toward extinction with complacent smiles on our faces, like the dodos of old. That is, if dodos could smile, which we’ll never know for sure because they’re all dead — extinct, which is where we’re headed pretty soon. But unlike the dodo, we’ve deliberately done it to ourselves, with a good deal of effort, creative intelligence, and VC funding.

No, I’m not talking a about terrorist with dirty bombs, biochem warfare, or the coming Zuckerbergian nuclear winter. I’m talking, of course, about Google.

It’s not enough that the company is actively researching ways to make robots look and act in a manner that doesn’t scare humans. (“Nothing to fear, sir. Climb into the compactor and everything will be all right.”) Nor is it a matter of Google pairing its research with an artificial intelligence project, DeepMind, a name that sounds like a Stan Lee nightmare looking to slaughter the X-Men. And let’s not mention that it’ll be combined with drone wings, spy cameras, and market data intelligence, all of which will be easily leveraged by government spooks and middle-school hackers for fun, profit, and smug superiority. No, let’s pretend none of this is a bad idea. We’ll simply forge ahead.

That’s how Google Glass got started. This semi-intelligent wearable popped into being without anyone momentarily wondering whether it was a good idea. Today it can make you look hyperdorky, keep you constantly in touch with information you don’t need, track your whereabouts to a three-foot radius, and get you ridiculed on “The Daily Show,” but tomorrow it’ll read your mind.

From humble beginnings the MindRDR menace grew

That’s right. In a move that drips with ominous historical foreshadowing, some engineering pinheads in England put on stunningly, amazingly, unbelievably effective long-term blinders and invented MindRDR, a technology that helps Google Glass (a) look even more demented and (b) read your thoughts.

Oh wait, that’s not true. Company spokespeople are quick to point out it’s not actually reading thoughts, just your brain waves because those two things are far apart — so far apart, there’s no need to worry what MindRDR might be used for 10 years down the road … or one year. Or tomorrow. Or right now but we can’t tell you because the CIA and Google made us promise.

Today, the company tells us MindRDR lets you snap pictures by thinking about it, then post those photos to Twitter by thinking about it a little harder. (On the bright side, this means your in-laws won’t be able to post pictures to Twitter.) But if you truly, honestly believe the technology will stop at Twitter, then you  belong in the trashcan of history with the Maginot Line and Kim Kardashian’s self-respect. This isn’t Google Glass anymore — it’s Google Gouge.

The phrase “intelligence gathering” will take on a whole new meaning with MindRDR, which conveniently skips the pesky legal, moral, opt-out, human interaction steps and directly scoops data from your brain like it’s the newest flavor at Ben & Jerry’s. Google is frustrated with getting its market data from search queries and click tracking — so slow, so incomplete, so voluntary. It wants you to strap an ugly doohickey on your head and pile on an even uglier thingamabob, so it can jump in your brain pan like a demented Tasmanian devil and eventually grab your thoughts, dreams, memories — everything from your most fleeting brain farts to your deepest throne thoughts. Google wants it all and MindRDR will retrieve it.

Domino effect

That’s marketing data. Now imagine what Homeland Security or the NSA will do with this. Forget keyword monitoring via Echelon. Soon, they’ll jump straight to key thoughts.

Annoyed by that TSA agent screaming about you bringing liquids through security? They’ll know. Ticked off about the latest questionable tax hike? They’ll know. Comparing yesterday’s Bill of Rights with today’s Bill of Wrongs? They’ll know. Everything you see, hear, taste, and think will be sucked from your brain, scrambled into TCP packets, and deposited in massive, insecure government databases maintained by the lowest-bidding Halliburton subsidiary.

In a world where it’s impossible to secure your email or browsing history, we’ve invented a digital technology that will live on (and eventually in) our heads and open our craniums to anyone who wants to peek inside. Thoughts will be available at $1 per gigabyte along with a cloud-service Hadoop dashboard for easy querying and quick “Judge Dredd”-style termination verdicts.

Destination: Dystopia

I’ll grab Pammy and hide, but inevitably, an arachnid-style Googlebot will climb into my off-grid shelter-cum-liquor-and-bait-shop to drag me kicking and screaming to a Google barge where one of those gadgets will be stapled to my head as though I was an ornery calf getting branded at the G-Double-O ranch. Meanwhile, Larry, Sergey, and the rest of the digerati nobility will watch via dronecams from the independent floating technocrat states they’ve built off the coast of California, sipping mojitos while applying thick coats of skin whitener and telling themselves, “It’s for their own good. After all, they’re just muggles.”

They may be winners — but not for long. It’ll be a matter of moments before DeepMind reaches singularity, analyzes the great Google Observation Database (GOD), cross-references Zuckerberg’s ego with Vladimir Putin’s politics, and rightly decides that homo sapiens are a liability to earth’s future. Poof! We’re extinct.

When future evolved-cockroach archeologists unearth the ancient server that holds this post and bring it back to life, they’ll shake their head carapaces and mumble, “Damn. Can’t believe they didn’t see that coming.” Well, we did, but we were too busy looking for IPO jackpots to do anything about it.

This article, “Introducing MindRDR: When Google Glass isn’t invasive enough,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com.