Siri is capable of speeding up computing for some tasks significantly. For example, I can tell her to “remind me to cancel my Amazon.com subscriptions in five months, fifteen days, at 5pm.” Within seconds she correctly understands my request and sets an alarm for 5.5 months in the future; a task that previously would have required a lot of typing and calendar manipulation.

I think that in ten years we will be speaking to computers in natural language, asking them to do things we currently do manually. So instead of googling something or finding a wikipedia article, we’ll ask the computer to do it for us. It’s easier and faster to ask a computer “what is the population of Syria” rather than finding the information with your fingertips.

Ironically this will mean that we will be speaking more to computers than to real people; sending a text will be done with voice (we will still choose to text each other because it is more time-efficient). And in twenty years we will likely be controlling computers with our thoughts; a process that is already possible.

– At a typical youtube bitrate of 768 kb/s, a 64GB CF can hold 8 days of continuous video (with a typical youtube bitrate). That’s enough to offload periodically on a hard drive.

– Cameras are cheap and many are no larger than a penny, they can be fit on glasses easily.

– The lame duck of the lot is battery. Batteries still suck big time. If the CF draws a typical 200 mW, the pinhole camera about 1200 mW and another 600 mW for the encoding chip and you’re up to 2W. A very good rechargeable half a pound lithium-ion battery will get you going 24 hours. 4 pounds will get you going the whole 8 days.

Wiretapping laws are likely to be an even bigger hindrance than carrying around 4 pounds of battery.

Call it Obamanationism and you’re close. S.S. D.A.