HP boffin predicts preggers spy bog

Stupid future HP has wheeled out a futurologist to tell everyone we're going to need a lot more enterprise-class storage, printer ink and and branded glossy photo paper in the year 2057.

As well as fattening photo albums, ubiquitous monitoring devices could be a threat to liberty, according to a groundbreaking speech by Martin Sadler, director of HP's crystal ball-polishing Trusted Systems Lab.

At a British Computer Society 50th anniversary event, he said that in 50 years time there will be at least one million spooky recording devices per person to capture our every move. He reckons up to 20 million cameras, motion sensors, sound recorders and other will make it possible to parse our entire lives, the BBC reports.

What anyone might want to do this for is somewhat unclear, but Sadler goes all Minority Report on our collective future-ass: "Maybe the first time you know you are pregnant is when a targeted piece of advertising comes through on your computer screen offering you some baby clothes because somehow the smart toilet, or some other aspect of your environment, leaked that information." Oo-er.

The seeds of this nightmare future where you can't take a piss without Google pumping ads direct to your retina are already being sown. A three year MIT Media Lab study [you again, lads? See here for a little background] is recording every gurgle and twitch of Associate Professor Deb Roy's baby son in a bid to win press coverage uncover the secrets of human development.

Sadler concluded: "We have some real choices that we can make over the next few years about how much we benefit from all this information...or how much it presents some sort of dark future for us." On his evidence, we predict a bright future for HP however. ®

Bootnote

According to Sadler, in 2057 our own bodies will also be "highly instrumented". This cast-iron research finding will come as no surprise to frontier-surfing man-machine Professor Kevin Warwick; AKA Captain Cyborg. In fact, he's probably a bit miffed at Sadler wandering onto his media-whoring cyberturf.