Big Dating

Another thing Big Data is going to change is dating. First of all, a computer will be able to profile you VERY well based on everything it knows about you. It will then be able to match you up with the person who is most perfect for you. Dating will be LESS common and marriage will be MORE common. Some day, your children will be able to find their soul-mates in the time it takes you to blink and your grand-children will ask you if it's really true that people used to waste roughly a decade dating random strangers and friends of friends.

Another way Big Data will change dating is with facial recognition software. As I said, Big Data will allow computers to know you better than you know yourself. You will have at least one online profile based on all the available information about you. you might have a public profile and a private one, but you will have at least one. But I digress. A potential mate will be able to take a picture of you and will then be able to access your public profile and know a lot about what kind of person you are. Perhaps more than you want them to know. But that door swings both ways. Hopefully, this will help you know if you've found the one you've been looking for or if there's a good chance the person sitting across from you had their last date chained up in the basement at home.

Until then, keep rolling those dice at the speed-dating tables.

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The Oracle

What's going to happen when Big Data analysis can predict the future? What are the advantages of knowing the future? Perhaps the biggest advantage - other than being able to prepare for natural and man-made disasters - would be the ability to make money in the stock market. Average middle-class workers will be able to invest in the stock market with little or no risk if Big Data can tell them which stocks will rise and which will fall. Will everyone get rich? Will this level the playing field in the financial world and lead to an economic equilibrium?

This will partly depend on how specifically the future can be predicted. I think, at first, the predictions will be relatively general, but as we gather more and more data and develop more and more sophisticated ways of analyzing it, our predictions will get more and more specific; especially once that analysis is done by a quantum computer. It won't be long before this oracle will have to factor ITSELF into its predictions and a kind of singularity will be reached. Who knows what will happen then?

On the other hand, if computers get really good at predicting the future, it will mean fewer surprises. Not NO surprises; but fewer. That can be good if the predictions are bad, but many will miss the spontaneity life will have lost. Part of what makes life so much fun is its ability to surprise us.

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Don't Tag Me Bro!

If employers are going to go snooping around our Facebook profiles uninvited, at some point, they're going to have to decide how many pictures of drunken shenanigans is too many. By that I mean, most people on Facebook have at least a few photos or other wall posts they'd rather their bosses not see. Some might have a warped sense of humor or a penchant for going on political rants. If employers are going to fault job candidates for every questionable thing they post on Facebook, they're going to wind up with a rather small pool of Puritans to choose from and all the jobs will go to the most boring people on the planet. Otherwise we're all just going to have to never post anything fun on Facebook and what's the point of going on Facebook if you're not allowed to post the occasional filthy limerick or some questionably homo-erotic photos of that time you and your friends decided to turn Twister into a drinking game.

Another thing to think about is the fact that many of these potential employers will, themselves, have some embarrassing things posted on THEIR Facebook walls. Your future boss can't very well hold those frat party photos against you if he or she has several photos on their wall of them doing a keg stand while dressed as a nun. Personally, I think if an employer wants to see MY Facebook profile, I should get to see THEIRS. Maybe I'd like to know what sort of bell-end I'm asking to work for. Maybe I want to see a background check on THEM. It's only fair. Let me see THEM half naked, passed out win a pool of their own puke with a cock and balls drawn in permanent marker on THEIR foreheads.

I wish I could start a NEW social networking site. One where the bosses aren't invited and the background checkers aren't allowed. Anyone who runs a company big enough to afford background checks can fuck right off. Yes, nothing to see here, Mr. Grenick. Go back your office and finish deleting all the porn off your browser history, you lifeless child-stalker.

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The Future Belongs to the Psychonauts

As robots become more and more sophisticated, they will gradually be able to do more and more jobs that humans do. I keep reading that the people whose jobs will be most secure in the future are people whose jobs are based on creativity and innovation. Robots can and will do a lot of impressive things, but it is doubtful that they will ever replace humans in the creative realm.

Keeping this in mind, I believe the future job market will belong largely to those who experiment with drugs, or at least have in the past. It has long been known in the drug culture that many drugs enhance creativity. Some drugs help people think in new and different ways. On the right drug, an already creative person can become much MORE creative and someone who is NOT very creative may be instilled with creativity they never knew they had. I believe people who enjoy marijuana and the occasional psychedelic will have a leg up on people who staunchly insist that "chemical creativity" is a crutch. Such critics assume that the drug user has no innate creativity of their own, but this is not so. I've had plenty of brilliant ideas when I was blind, stinking sober, but nothing helps you think outside the box like a little chemical inspiration. Those Puritans can comfort themselves with their "moral victory" as they stand in the unemployment line. Meanwhile, I'll be making the world a better place and getting paid for my ideas.

It should also be noted that the government is only shooting themselves in the out by arresting and incarcerating so many of their greatest innovators. I guess if they don't want to hear great ideas if they come from a guy who's out of his mind on LSD, perhaps some other country will want to patent the next big breakthrough.

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