The Human Resistance Report

Peace Officer of the Future?

No, I’m  not talking about Robocop –  but with all the advances in  facial recognition, artificial inteligence, chaos theory, biometrics,  remote access , UAVs, etc.  isnt it feasible to imagine that technology someday may be used to prevent the types of crimes that require police intervention to begin with at all.  With the advent of exponentialy more powerful  technology, we may even be able to modify behavior to prevent people from even trying to commit crimes.  But is this a good thing or not?  When society gets locked down by a network  capable of tracking and apprehending people quickly and effeciently - citizens  will not be so quick break the law.

 Currently, if you have a warrant, you have to get picked up or stopped by the police before you go to jail.  People commit crimes right in broad daylight, confident that no one saw them or could identify them.  People can steal a car and drive it away.  These are all things that could change in the not too distant future.  However, crime will never go away and as consumers and younger generations become more tech savy – they are more likely to be commiting computer crimes than crimes against humanity. 

For example, lets step into the future for just a moment say maybe 25 years or so ….and lets say that a known fugitive is on the run, but every lightpost on the street is a camera that ties to a database with facial recognition, much like London is today.

Could this be a peek into our future?

In our future, computers can use the camera network to retrace his steps and even makes predictions as to where he is most likely headed.  If he gets into a vehicle, then the network could communicate with the vehicle via a system just like OnStar. Locking the fugitive in the car, it can now drive him to jail – as self driving cars have been all the rage for the last 10 years. 

If someone carjacks a person, the car itself would rationalize and use artifical intellengece to recognize  the robbery just as plaintly as you yourself realize you are being robbed, – your car is smart enough to figure it out too.  It is stubborn though , and doesn’t like to drive carhjackers around. It can lock itself and wait for authorization from the owner before proceeding.  It will either be unauthorized or it will drive itself to the police station. (noticing a pattern here?)  This would lead to a sever drop in car theft if cars could recognize a crime being commited againt them. They could capture a video  as a suivenier for court.  

As artificial intellegence becomes available to the public, we will see smart appliances that that are a whole lot smarter than we ever thought they could be.  Suddenly everything will be built with intelligence and reasoning. Your house will know it is being robbed just as obviously as you would know you were being held up.  The house sees it all.. knows it been broken into and can even outsmart the crooks somehow.. perhaps luring them into a panic room.. ….

  “NO dont let them into the office — thats where my jewlery collection is..” then when they’re in the office it closes them in, untill a UAV can arrive and escort  them to the nearest unmanned patrol vehicle  waiting to – you guessed it , drive them to jail.  If your not home, your house could twitter you to let you know your getting sacked – but no prob – its handled the situation.

As we get away from using cash, there will be less reason to rob people on the street except for jewelry and shoes.  But remember, all our appliances are smart… and precious metals are especially important to us – so all jewelry has microchip RFID chips built into them. In fact everything we own ha  RFID chips built into them now - the fun part is that they are so microscopic it is very hard to locate and discard them. 

 You want to track and find all of the stuff you have RFID chips in? no prob – theres an app for that. Everybody will be walking around with virtual crime labs in their pockets as mobile devices hold more and productive applications they may be able scan fingerprints, do chemical analysis, video/audio playback, spectral graphs, and whole other array of things we dont even know well be using yet. 

If your stuff is stolen  just whip out your iPhone or Blackberry and you will find it flashing like a beacon – since it can communicate with things around it , it can tell the camera at starbucks to take a photo of its location and then send that to you – this of course will give your picture of the assailent – which Google FacePro has already indexed the name as well as known social networking sites or affiliations.  Its very hard to escape attention in this world. It looks fast , cold , like no care, like no one is watching … but thats just because everything is watching. In this society, people will become conditioned to living their lives in a fishbowl and offenders of the law will be detained with a swiftness that would create a state of fear based conformity.

As the population grows, the need for more law enforcement is going to increase. As it is now, police cannot even keep up with the amount of crime happening today. By sending out droves of UAVs , law enforcement can free up street police to handle more personlized issues among the people. Meanwhile, those who are breaking or running from the law will be tracked down by UAVs and ‘asked’  to surrender themselves. Those who dont play nice will feel the fulll wrath of what a precision mounted taser leash can feel like as it ’s walking you to a patrol car.

Check fraud will be a thing of the past as there will be no more checks or paper money.  With so much of society going electronic, all of our tasks will end up being automated , allowing us to experience more cerebral endeavors.

If your a decent citizen , but suddenly have awarrant, you my be notified by a freindly email – an animation from a virtual peace officer , asking you to please report to jail to turn yourself in or schedule an appointment for when you will turn yourself in.  Jail time can be served at home as leg devices track every movement and prevent you from leaving your parameter without attracting the immediate attention of a local roving drone.

  As the gap between the haves and have-not grows wider, you will see two societies – one that has all the advantages of  scientific breakthoughs and lifestyle the reflects the most advanced level of existance. The other society will be the one that live off their leftovers.  They will still be plagued with crime as none of their devices will be able to tattle. Their squabbles amongst themselves will barley raise the attention of the local police who will just send in drones to quiet them and keep the peace again. Typical of society, they will send in the machines to do the work of man, to clean up the bad neiborhoods with dismissive wave of drones.

Its simply not enough for robots to take human jobs… now they have to take jobs from defenceless animals.  Just recently a zoo in St Louis replaced their Polar Bears with electronic versions of the arctic  animals. Having trouble keeping the bears alive for a variety of reasons over the years, they have given up and  elected to put an electronic bears in its place. Its unlikely that they will fool anybody , but I guess an avatar of a bear is better than an empty spot in the zoo.

I can’t help but to wonder though if this is not an analogy for what is really happening on a larger scale. The bears are endangered to begin with , and have a hard enough time surviving in the wild. Clearly they have  an  even harder time staying alive in human captivity. The bottom line is that they are not surviving. No problem – technology to the rescue!  Just replace them with electronic versions and you have yourself a rehabilitated species.

 As time goes on children who look at electronic animals will think that’s just how zoos are supposed to look, and as animatronics get better and artificial intelligence evolves, we may not see any reason to keep live animals in zoos anyways. All we really want to do is fool our senses into believing that we have seen a polar bear.

One day,  we may find ourselves asking the question  “Do we really need to have live animals anyway?”  After all, we have all their DNA and we could just conjure up a real one if we ever really need it right? Sort of like a modern day Noahs Ark – we keep their DNA in storage to protect the species , then use electronic proxies to remind people what the species looks and acts like. Meanwhile , we have assimulated them and if we do not need to consume them , then we will just keep them shelved till some time when we may need to reseed the earth or some other planet. I only wonder if by then, humans will have already been replaced with electronic proxies also.