Forget Facebook... Meet Gattica Gone Wild!

Would you ever think of putting your most personal information on the Web? Sure you would. You probably do it everyday. Especially is you are using the Facebook mobile application for iPhone or Android. Most people don't think twice about uploading personal pictures to the web to share with friends and family despite the fact that once uploaded all that information belongs to the owners of the social networking software. However, while less than glamorous pictures of you doing a keg stand at your best friend's house last week may not concern you, what if you had the ability to receive medical services via web-based applications? Would you be willing to upload your personal genome data.... ?

Genome Data

Folks, I'm not talking about simple Web 1.0 medical functions like doing a search for your symptoms on WebMD. I'm talking about uploading your most personal information to the Internet. In my mind nothing gets more personal than your own genetic code.  While the advantage of availability may be appealing to some, the challenges associated with a lack of confidentiality and integrity are enough to make me hesitate for a minute. Well, maybe more than a minute. Check out the "Biomedicine" tab at MIT's Technology Review to read more.

Shattering Taboo: Wedlock Child Next Evolutionary Step In Human Behavior

Watson and Apple have been busy. That's right, people, busy making babies... and guess what? They're not even married. As a matter of fact, until now, many of their closest friends would have considered them enemies of some sort. Well I guess this proves the old adage true, opposites still do attract and often with very profound results. So, who is this baby everyone is clamoring about? Her name is Siri, and doctors are hailing her birth is the next evolutionary step in human behavioral change.

That's right the Natural Language Processing (NLP) phenomenon known as IBM's Watson and Apple's iPhone have plugged in to produce a truly affordable and effective wireless man-machine interface - a phone that can interpret plain language, search for an answer, and return that answer in real-time to the user.

Imagine this kid's possibilities? Siri may grow up to leave the nest (e.g. the confines of the iPhone) and choose to live inside the Mac Book Pro, iPad, or iMac, fall in love with Web 2.0, and have a child of her own known as Web 3.0, whose greatest contribution to man-kind could be the invention of a new profession: the Personal Digital Assistant.

I envision a world where, before going to bed on a Thursday evening, I tell my digital assistant to find the most current news headlines for tomorrow morning, leave my brother a message about our camping trip this weekend, and ensure the electric car gets charged for my daily commute. See what a couple of cocktails, a great night out in Silicon Valley, and a little confidence still yield... one awesome night and a kid named Siri that will make you millions.