Enter Google Voice. I heard about this some months ago, but it never really struck me as useful. I’m highly suspicious of Google, despite their “Don’t be evil” tagline. There’s got to be some evil reason behind hording all of this data. Our emails? Texts? Websites? Now our voices and phone numbers? Oh that’s right, if you sync your contacts with Google Contacts they already have them. So for my personal line? Never! I have no desire to use Google Voice for this. Frankly, I don’t even trust the phone companies with my data, but this may be a necessary breech for now. But for business? Yes! Google Voice has great potential for the independent business person.

Google Voice comes in two tasty varieties: Use your own number or get a new one. If you use your own, your stuck. No additional number for you. If you choose the Red Pill, then you’ll get a new phone number that you can set to ring at any number of phones. It’ll get your voicemail when you don’t answer. It’ll even send your voicemail as text messages. That’s right. Rumor has it, voice to text. Don’t panic yet…

Features for using your own number

• Google voicemail: voicemail like email
• Voicemail transcription: read what your voicemail says
• Custom greetings: vary voicemail greetings by caller
• International calling: low cost calls to the world
• Notifications: read voicemail messages via email or SMS
• Share voicemails: forward, embed, or download voicemails

Features if you get a new Google number

• One number: a single phone number that rings all your phones
• Free SMS: send, receive & store text messages online
• Block calls: send unwanted callers straight to voicemail
• Record calls: record phone calls and store them online
• Conference calls: join several people into a single call
• Screen callers: hear who is calling before you pick up

Here are some videos to wet your appetite. If you have a Voice account, please send me an invite! I applied for an account last week. Now I’m just waiting… and waiting… hitting refresh on my email over and over. Nothing but emails from cute girls. Where are you Google Voice invitation?

WikiPedia explains human computation as,

… a computer science technique in which a computational process performs its function by outsourcing certain steps to humans (Kosorukoff, 2001). This approach leverages differences in abilities and alternative costs between humans and computer agents to achieve symbiotic human-computer interaction.

More plainly, human computation is a system that uses human decision making where questions require more or higher reasoning than any computer program can accomplish efficiently. Efficiency is the operative concept here. It’s possible to write programs of infinite complexity that make strategic decisions based on vast amounts of statistical data; but our species hasn’t completely mastered the physical hardware to do this. If-then logic is extremely powerful as applied to reason, but in the programming sense, only when supplemented by scores of data.

The human memory still holds a lot of data that isn’t available online–or that hasn’t yet been entered into a database, at least. We think of companies like Google compulsively hoarding and processing tons of data, but the human brain still holds more and processes more information than this organization could fathom. Facial recognition is a perfect example of this because, while a video camera can record you and a computer can store this data, all that is collected is the series of images making up the video. You can’t, for instance, query a JPG to know the manufacture of the shirt on the news anchor.

In 20th century video surveillance,  the software didn’t yet know who the person was on camera. It still took a human to answer this question because we could do it faster. The relationships and associations human beings connect to bits of data, and the manners we employ to retrieve or “remember” these data are inherently efficient. We’re teaching the internet how to be like this, too.

Cheaper hardware, more advanced programming methodologies, and more efficient database systems are making it possible for our species to record data about physical space that hasn’t before been logged. Take for instance Facebook’s photo tagging and the similar service now offered by flikr. How far off are we from our homes knowing that it’s us at the door? How long before Facebook’s upload tool automatically recognizes everyone in a photo?

Man is God.

He is everywhere, he is anybody, he knows everything.

This is the Prometeus new world.

All started with the Media Revolution, with Internet, at the end of the last century.

Everything related to the old media vanished: Gutenberg, the copyright, the radio, the television, the publicity.

The old world reacts: more restrictions for the copyright, new laws against non authorized copies. Napster, the music peer to peer company is sued.

At the same time, free internet radio appears; TIVO, the internet television, allows to avoid publicity; the Wall Street Journal goes on line; Google launches Google news.

Millions of people read daily the biggest on line newspaper. Ohmynews written by thousands of journalists; Flickr becomes the biggest repository in the history of photos, YouTube for movies.

The power of the masses.

A new figure emerges: the prosumer, a producer and a consumer of information. Anyone can be a prosumer.

The news channels become available on Internet.

The blogs become more influential than the old media.

The newspapers are released for free.

Wikipedia is the most complete encyclopedia ever.

In 2007 Life magazine closes.

The NYT sells its television and declares that the future is digital. BBC follows.

In the main cities of the world people are connected for free.

At the corners of the streets totems print pages from blogs and digital magazines.

The virtual worlds are common places on the Internet for millions of people.

A person can have multiple on line identities.

Second Life launches the vocal avatar.

The old media fight back.

A tax is added on any screen; newspapers, radios and televisions are financed by the State; illegal download from the web is punished with years of jail.

Around 2011 the tipping point is reached: the publicity investments are done on the Net. The electronic paper is a mass product: anyone can read anything on plastic paper.

In 2015 newspapers and broadcasting television disappear, digital terrestrial is abandoned, the radio goes on the Internet.

The media arena is less and less populated. Only the Tyrannosaurus Rex survives. The Net includes and unifies all the content. Google buys Microsoft. Amazon buys Yahoo! and become the world universal content

leaders with BBC, CNN and CCTV.

The concept of static information – books, articles, images – changes and is transformed into knowledge flow.

The publicity is chosen by the content creators, by the authors and becomes information, comparison, experience.

In 2020 Lawrence Lessig, the author of ‘Free Culture’, is the new US Secretary of Justice and declares the copyright illegal.

Devices that replicate the five senses are available in the virtual worlds. The reality could be replicated in Second Life.

Any one has an Agav (agent-avatar) that finds information, people, places in the virtual worlds.

In 2022 Google launches Prometeus, the Agav standard interface.

Amazon creates Place, a company that replicates reality. You can be on Mars, at the battle of Waterloo, at the Super Bowl as a person. It’s real.

In 2027 Second Life evolves into Spirit. People become who they want.

And share the memory. The experiences. The feelings. Memory selling becomes a normal trading.

In 2050 Prometeus buys Place and Spirit. Virtual life is the biggest market on the planet. Prometeus finances all the space missions to find new worlds for its customers: the terrestrial avatar.

Experience is the new reality.

Voice: Philip K. Dick Avatar.
Date: 6th April 2051