quartz-poker:

the-ink-pad:

wirehead-wannabe:

mugasofer:

lizardywizard:

But now I’m wondering how all these facial recognition algorithms we’re coming up with now are going to take to the Bright New Transhumanist Future

Like, okay, we know Google can recognise dogs. But what about stranger things? Is anyone training these things on lizards?

Imagine basilisks specifically designed to crash these algorithms: abstract-blocks-of-black-and-white-for-heads that, like the QR codes of old, carry a hidden message in their patterning, only it’s a payload, a virus that shreds the system of anyone who tries to capture it on camera, the natural evolution of anti-face-detection camouflage. Imagine things that don’t even have faces, that don’t have an equivalent and easily-cataloguable part; people who deliberately wear mass-produced, identical android bodies, the Guy Fawkes masks of the future.

It’s a thing! Turns out, people would rather not look stupid than not be caught by facial recognition.

Somehow they look exactly like you would expect cyperpunk protagonists trying to avoid detection by facial recognition software to look.

This is exactly everything I expect futuristic cyberpunks to look, at least the faux-80′s idea of what the future would look like.

The idea is usually to try and break up or obscure the T that your eyes, nose and mouth make. And lets face it, if a computer can’t make a match, a human can still go over the tapes and go “Yes that’s a person” and do facial matching the old-fashioned way.

In fact, trying to obscure your face can and often does raise red flags (the general feeling among people outside of the “absolute privacy must be absolute” crowd is that you don’t go to THESE kinds of lengths unless you are hiding something). Sure, that’s profiling, but it’s profiling with a rational basis as opposed to a bigoted one.

Best way to have privacy in public is to blend in. Look unremarkable. Look unimportant. Don’t do anything rash, sudden, or illegal. If you want your privacy in public (which is, by definition, the least private place in the world), you have to look like the kind of guy who has nothing going on. Oh, and don’t be an A-list or B-list celebrity.

The lady on the bottom left would NOT be able to hide from facial detection. The T is unbroken and even helpfully highlighted.

I would just wear the guy fawkes mask when committing crimes.