 |
Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
|
 |
Meet Samsung's SmartTV Telescreen
Here's a quaint little excerpt from Samsung's UK privacy policy for it's SmartTV device:

(Living room surveillance ala Big Brother is sexy, no? Actually, no.)
“To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service that converts speech to text or to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you.”
"In addition, Samsung may collect and your device may capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features.”
“Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.”
Regular Technovelgy readers will not be surprised when I mention George Orwell's 1948 novel 1984, which described the use of the telescreen. In particular, the telescreen could listen in on conversations:
Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.
Update 24-Jun-2016: I forgot to include a reference to the city fathers from Cities in Flight (1957), by James Blish. These AI computers listened to everyone in the city, and evaluated their speech, and occasionally chimed in:
"...The fact that they're in this part of space at all... shows something went wrong with their first job, too."
Anderson snapped a switch on his chair. "Probability?" he said to the surrounding air.
"SEVENTY-TWO PER CENT," the air said back, making Chris start. He still had not gotten used to the idea that the City Fathers overheard everything one said, everywhere and all the time; among many other things, the city was their laboratory in human psychology, which in turn enabled them to answer such questions as Anderson had just asked.
(Read more about machine surveillance)
End update.
Via The Register.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 2/9/2015)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.
| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories -
("
Surveillance
")
New Train Station Offers Minority Report-Style Signs
A whole new world awaits you, John Anderton!
'Ring Nation' Show Predicted By William Gibson In 1999
'... you had your trademark Lucky Dragon Global Interactive Video Column outside.'
The Wanderer: Eyebot From Fallout, Eye From Zelazny
'We send our eyes on their appointed rounds, and they can hover or soar or back up...' - Roger Zelazny, 1966.
Small Town Wants 60 License Plate Readers
'the registration number which the traffic control automatically photographed as she left the controlway...' - Robert Heinlein, 1940.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
|
 |
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Win $250K By Reading Ancient Scrolls Carbonized By Vesuvius
'... it was as if the upper part had been removed, like a cut deck of cards.'
Toy-Like Robot Well-Being Coaches Are The Best
Sumomo will get those office workers into good shape!
AI-Trained Snack App Avatar Goes On Dates For You
'... who let their handbag computers carry all the conversation.'
M-Dwarf Stars May Not Have Habitable Planets
'Thus it came about that the search for a planetiferous sun near a white dwarf star was not unduly prolonged...'
Too Soon To Doom Lunar Farside Observatories
'Earth never shone there, but life was good.'
Amitabh Bachchan Wins Personality Protection
'He led me down the Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides.'
LIAM F1 UWT Clever Rooftop Windmill
'...a windmill on his roof...'
Scent-Identifying Robot Uses Machine Learning
'It's picking up diphenyl compounds and tetrahydrocarbons...'
Volvo's Autonomous Truck
'They were automatic trucks such as are used for making deliveries...'
Skiing On The Moon - Skiing on Asteroids?
'MacIntyre bent down without a word and picked up the wide skis necessary to negotiate the powdery ash.'
Liberty Lifter X-Plane From DARPA
'...the tremendous speed that the Jupiter was turning up under the thrust of her twenty-four screws whirling on the shafts of twelve powerful motors.'
Robot Performs 3D Bioprinting Inside The Body
'Probably Runciter's body contained a dozen artiforgs...'
Bubloons May Be The Start Of Something Much Bigger
'Spurgle kicked at the letter G... It was a monstrous white thing, ten feet thick, half a city block long...'
Sleeping Pods In Tokyo Railway Stations
'... she was asleep before the lid sealed fully back in place.'
Wist Labs Makes Minority Report Family Videos Come True
Step inside your memory - it's immersive.
Robot Imagines Itself (Not The First Time This Has Happened)
'[Robots] have to discover their hands, feet, and other parts of their bodies'
More SF in the News Stories
More Beyond Technovelgy science news stories
|
 |