Laurent Clause 

Interview to Rudy Rucker

for l’Ol, a French computer magazine. Paris, 3/6/2003

Q: How do you imagine real-life computers and digital technologies  in
ten years?

A: The two things I notice about my computer compared to ten years ago
are that (a) the hardware is faster and better and (b) the software is
bossier and less comfortable to use. It’s a shame to see our  hardware
advances  squandered  on bloatware.  Like  the Soviet-style  Communism
states, Microsoft and Apple will collapse within ten years.

One change that’s still happening is the use of cyberspace. Touted  as
the next big thing in the 1980s, virtual reality has today taken  hold
in computer games. Graphics cards have reached a mind-boggling  level,
with  more  to  come.  In  ten  years,  we’ll  have  an   intelligent,
cooperative 3D user interface.

Two  cute  applications  I  foresee  quite  soon  are  stunglasses and
lifeboxes.

Stunglasses are opaque glasses with small video cameras. The user sees
video on the insides of the lenses. The video is realtime filtered and
transformed version of the world around. Thus you can turn your  world
into bright cartoons; it’s a way of getting high without drugs.

A lifebox is a device that learns your life story and can imitate  you
in talking to your descendants. When I retire, I can begin programming
my lifebox by telling stories  to it. The lifebox interrupts  and asks
details, I  fill in  more and  more. Then  the users  can do the same,
listen to the lifebox and interrupt at any time. It’s a way of storing
the fractal that is one’s life story.

Q: Describe  some digital  futures you’ve  envisioned in  your science
-fiction tales.

A: Self-reproducing  robots. Intelligent  flying cameras  the size and
shape of  dragonflies. People  who only  have sex  with robots.  Robot
colonies on the moon. Robots fighting wars with humans over oil, which
is used to make the plastics they need.

I’m very big  on computers that  aren’t made of  silicon and metal.  I
foresee a time of computers make of what I call piezoplastic, which is
like  an  intelligent plastic  mollusk.  As does  a  mollusk, my  soft
computers will display colors on their skins.

I often write about a  universal communication device called an  uvvy.
It’s  soft and  you wear  it on  the back  of your  neck. It  has an
interface directly to your brain via electromagnetic fields. It’s like
a cell  phone and  a wireless  web browser  in your  head, almost like
telepathy.

The border between biology and computer science will become ever  more
permeable.  Ultimately  we  won’t  have  any  machines  at  all; every
appliance or tool will be  some kind of tweaked organism.  Genomics is
the true nanotechnology.