These two shots are from Whinfell, Center Parcs, the week I fell over and broke my foot and shoulder. Which I'm afraid to say is almost a year ago now! The second shot is stupidly blurry because I was too lazy to do it properly.
When I was a child, one of the houses we lived in (okay, actually several of the houses we lived in) backed onto fields. The particular field I'm thinking of however, was a rich source of ... field mushrooms. Very similar to the kind that you can buy in the supermarket now, only we had to get up early and go foraging for them. I can remember making a stove of sorts out of an empty tin of Lyle's Golden Syrup - holes punched in the side for ventilation, candle in the bottom, lid used as a cooking surface. Melt some butter in the lid and slowly and inefficiently fry sliced up field mushrooms in the melted butter. Agonisingly dozy but so delicious! I was reminded of this relatively frequent activity on a walk a while back when we came across some funny looking mushroom/toadstools and one of my children asked if we could eat them. I had no idea because I didn't recognise them. So I went to get a book on recognising mushrooms from the library. And realised that I have a problem. I would look at the images in the book and then the next week find myeslf looking at whatever bit of fungus was in front of me and simply could not seem to match them up with anything in my memory. I mean, who lugs a book round with them all the time on the off chance they'll find a shroom? My default answer then is now 'No. You can't eat them', but I wonder what delights I'm missing out on simply because I can't remember from one day to the next what a mushroom looks like?
Smart alec! When I said 'a while back', I really did mean a while back. I think my smartphone looked like this: But even if I were to use my phone now, I think I'd struggle to accurately determine if what was in the picture looked exactly like what I was looking at. Perhaps I need to go out with an expert.
We had those bricks too, they wouldn't let my wife get one in her name (no credit history) and they were terrified of giving me two in my name, they just couldn't work out why I wanted to pay for two phones. In a few years, augmented reality via phone will solve your problem, you'll just point the phone camera the mushroom and it'll be automatically labelled with what it is. Or more likely, your headset / eyepiece / glasses / retina-cam will do it for you.
Part of me really likes that idea. Part of me worries that our ability to learn and retain information will go down the pan completely. I'm already aware of a reduced tolerance for sitting reading things. I want my information fast and punchy and I'm so used to scrolling past adverts and having random links pop up that I worry I am losing the abililty to concentrate on ANYTHING!
Yeh, it'll be interesting. Gone are the days of long conversations in the lounge about whether something really happened in 1971 or 1968, now it takes 30 seconds on Wikipedia and the conversation moves on to something else. The world is changing. Halting State and Rule 34 by Charles Stross aren't superb books, but they're a great insight in to augmented reality and what happens when smart phones become super computers. They're hard going, high in jargon, but his insight into how augmented reality will change our daily lives is great.
Geren, I was going to post something similar. I quite like not being able to know everything at the press of a button. Having to put some effort into something seems to make it more worthwhile and gives a [minor] sense of achievement. Augmented reality in the form of being able to look up something instantly probably means knowledge will become as throw-away as an empty packet. S
Also, while I'm good at remembering a face (I know if I've met someone before) I'm terrible at remembering names (even though I try and use the relevant techniques), so I'll finally be happy to be able to look at someone and have a little label pop up over their head to tell me their name. And age. And last facebook post. And current job. And last Instagram picture. And their friends. And religious associations. And political leanings. ... ...
We're stumbling right into that future. Google Glass was just a bit too early - too many people in the target age range were still nervous about security and privacy and always on cameras. In another 10 years, the Instagram / Snapchat generation will have all the disposable income they need to buy always on, augmented reality glasses, with built in video live streaming. Exciting times ahead.
There's a story about Sir Thomas Beecham that goes something like this : I met a woman in Fortnum and Mason and remembered that she had a brother. "What's your brother doing these days" "Oh he's still King" MickLL
