The next 10 years will see a quality shift in the quality of commercial satellite images available. The company Digital Globe has through lobbying made the U.S. government relax their limits from 50cm to 25cm opening up to upcoming super improvement of satellite image quality.
This is a starting point for the future where you’ll be able to get extremely detailed and in the account of more satellites, more updated images. Of you in the park, your plane landing at the airport or a volcanic eruption. Looking at this future though the perspective of biological technology and the surveillance there are scary implications. As Snowden said (to paraphrase) the future generations of kids will not know of privacy as we did.
Some time ago I did a post on the inevitability of singularity and when I read articles like this one from Motherbord – Google’s Satellites Could Soon See Your Face from Space – my understanding and vision of what’s coming kicks alive. Not only the Orwellian aspects of it, I can see the possibilities also, but mostly on how the awareness among people even at my age is limited and most people lack in interest. Sometimes it feels like we live in a middle age yet have these advanced tech around us – not understanding it, just using it and being satisfied with it.
The future of humankind and the potential transhumanism world awaiting should be thought of in every aspect. And satellites are very interesting, being the eyes on the world from above. Also there are so many that we should open more awareness on how to keep space clean.
What do you think?