Personal Daemons and Wuffie

On the Karma thingy: And then all the cool places are overrun by a horde of n00bs eventually none of the cool guys will go to any cool places anymore. Effect: another cool place destroyed. Secondary effect: everybody who has a high cool-rating would turn of his device for the right to be alone (at least when he visits a "cool place" because he wants this place to stay cool). Tertiary effect: the whole karma system goes down in mediocrity at best because the only ones gaining from the system are the non-cool. After all coolness is defined by being the one defining the cool places, isn't it? Thus the cool do not need the system.

Same on the Wuffie paragraph. If you need to know my wuffie score, then you definitely are not the one I need to let my wuffie score known.

Imagine the difficulty to follow any conversation if something is constantly ringing in your ear. The gaydar, the movie-dar, the hobby-dar, or the potential-employer-approaching-dar. I'd be happy to be left alone if it only takes so much as flipping a switch to "off".

Hi Lars,

Good points. What you forget is that many with really high karma scores get them because they enjoy being in the public light. If what you were saying was true there would be no exclusive clubs in the real world today. Everyone knows cool people go there, yet they still go.

I agree there will be times when people will "go dark" or "turn off", or whatever the terms will be, but that's part of any social interaction cycle where people get tired of the scrutiny and not unique to this one.

As far as the constant ringing in your ear, all that is customizable--just as it is today. You'll simply tell your PDA, "Stop bothering me unless it's an emergency.", and it'll say, "All social alerts disabled.", or whatever.

Does that help at all?

Well, rather than write what I was going to write, I'll just save time and say that I agree with Lars. I just don't see how this is even a slight improvement on life as we know it. It's not something I envision myself using, and I can't imagine it being popular for a very wide audience. Yes, as you say, you could turn it off, but why turn it on? On the other hand, technology advances at an incredible pace and there's no way to know what the capabilities will be in 20 years .. or what sorts of things will become such a part of the world that we'll wonder how we ever did without them. The internet itself is one such thing today, but a big difference between the internet as it is generally used today and the future you envision is the lack of privacy and the level of intrusiveness in your future. Those are two HUGE strikes in my book, but perhaps that's just me getting old.

On a similar vein...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10108609-71.html

I've been thinking a lot about the idea of a small computer you carry around with you that interacts in all sorts of new ways. For example, say you are hiking a trail in some wildlife preserve. Out of curiosity you whip out your computer and it gives you the history of the trail (Wikipedia, etc.), average visitors per year, the last time someone hiked that trail, how many others are on it and how far away and other information.
Or you could be out with friends and their computer would immediately tell them what restaurants are near by (these could be narrowed down by food type, etc.) and other activities such as concerts or events. If there was any points of interest nearby, like if a nearby spot has any historical significance.
This same device could easily be plugged into a base station at home, work, library, coffee shop, whatever and you would now have your portal pocket computer with a full mouse, keyboard, screen and speakers.
All of your data would be stored online and cached and encrypted locally, so if you lost or broke your device you could simply buy a new one and log back in to your online services and sync up.

I can see Robert Scoble being a big fan of this and that says it all.

@Maxo: in my experience, traveling of any kind (hiking, exploring a new city, etc) becomes less fun the more you know. The best experiences come from being clueless and having to use your senses to the best of their ability to find your way. When I find myself walking through a foreign city with someone using, for example, a GPS handset, I get very frustrated. Instead of looking up and around, they look down and straight ahead.

Your example of the trail would ruin the moment for me. Knowing who else is on the trail? When it was last hiked? Heck, if I can't see anyone, then I want to assume that I'm totally alone, and that the trail hasn't been hiked in years!

I have to say, this sounds primarily like a social gimmick / popularity contest. I suppose it might be cool if you're a scenester, but I value my privacy. I just don't want to broadcast that sort of thing publicly. I may be in the minority, and I know attitudes change over time, but I don't think the general population is ready for this either. Who's going to want to walk around with a low karma (the equivalent of a big L on your forehead)? People are going to find ways to cheat the system (the equivalent of multiple accounts to vote themselves up) to give themselves a higher karma. Result: meaningless personal information being publicly broadcast at a risk of possible identity theft.