Two Rings to Rule Them All?
Oura Smart Ring & Veritas
To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
History of the Future, continued
Scott Doorley’s mind-bending book, Assembling Tomorrow, contains fictional interludes of imagined future technology.
One is named Veritas, a hypertracking device worn by people important enough to fear blackmail, lawsuits, or sabotage via deep-fake representations of their words or actions. Here’s how it works:
Veritas™—the leading self-tracking service—keeps a detailed inventory of everything you do: audio, facial scans, location down to the millimeter, time down to the millisecond, biometrics, skin contact—whatever can be reliably captured. The more resolution—the more intimate the data—the better; it makes the data harder to fake and easier to trust. Unsavory simulations get checked against your Veritas™ data story, and voilà! Falsified claims and deep fakes are debunked in an instant. (Assuming the data is believable and you’re innocent, of course.)
As it happens, I have been wearing a Veritas ring ever since I graduated from college in 1972. And for the past few days I have worn a ring-sizing loop on the finger next to it, in preparation for the Oura Ring that I ordered after hearing about it at South By Southwest.
Promoted as “a first-of-its-kind smart ring,” Oura promises to create “a truly holistic picture of your health.”
Might the Oura ring be a precursor to Doorley’s creepy vision for Veritas?
That’s what I intend to find out!