Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Signs of the Future to Come?

From today's Investors Business Daily's Trends and Innovations section:

"A traffic camera in Finland can use its software to check on the insurance and tax status of the vehicle’s owner, as well as catch speeders. Developed by a Finnish tech research center, the camera also measures distances between vehicles to identify tailgaters, and can even zoom in on a car to see whether the driver is wearing a seat belt. The camera systems can transmit the data immediately via satellite to police. Finland will test the system through 2011. VTT Technical Research Center in Finland predicts other EU nations will adopt the cameras in 2013."

Maybe I am being a little too paranoid but... Can you imagine this technology, its database, and facial recognition software tied together? Think that I am crazy? Well, here is another segment from the same section as above.

"A computer program that can recognize human emotions by listening to a conversation has been developed by engineers in Spain. The application analyzes the sound waves and words used to determine if the speaker is sad, happy or nervous. If it can’t figure out the emotion, it provides probability percentages of the emotion the speaker might be feeling."

Now what do you think? This is not science fiction.

1 comment:

  1. It's like smashing atoms..... great technology, but it all depends on how it gets used....

    ReplyDelete