I see the future of privacy…

…and there will be none.

In 2010, I wrote a graphic novel called “Vision Machine” that depicts a world in which a revolutionary piece of personal technology called the iEye allows us to record anything we can see or imagine and instantly share it with the world. Massive creative opportunities ensue — and then the other shoe drops with massive trademark, copyright, privacy and surveillance complications.

Even as we speak, Google Glass is bringing part of the world of “Vision Machine” to life. If you’re wearing Google Glass, you can be fairly certain that everything you see can be legally logged and monitored by business or government entities.

But assuming we maintain our current attitudes and policies regarding privacy and surveillance, it’s going to get much worse.

Within twenty years, someone will develop a true mind-machine interface that will allow us to directly upload and download information to and from our brains.Within a generation, everyone who hopes to compete in the world will acquire brain implants that allow for instant acquisition of information and faster processing of data.

But for the average person, these brain implants will only be available through corporations that provide backdoors to business and government entities to enable the tracking and monitoring of all information that passes through the devices.

In short, businesses and governments will be able to literally read our minds.

They will know and have a record of exactly what we are thinking.

I think I know what “Vision Machine II” will be about.

Am I wrong? I hope so. You tell me!

Open thread! Got questions? I’ll try to answer!

Had a lot of fun with this last night, so I figured I’d try it again before plunging into the nightshift.

Ask me questions and I’ll try to answer ‘em!

I’ll just ask everyone to avoid spoilers and to please not pitch projects or stories – I can’t read or respond to those!

Also, life is short, so nastiness or personal attacks against anyone automatically get deleted. But y’all are cool, I know. 😉

Thanks!

“Zod” Villains Month book preview! Art by Ken Lashley, script by Greg Pak

ZOD2

DC Comics has released a couple of gorgeous colored pages from the “Zod” book I’m writing and Ken Lashley is drawing. The book’s full title is “Action Comics #23.2: Zod,” so I guess it’s technically my first issue of “Action”! 😉

The book hits stores in September. Ask your local retailer to order a copy for you today!

For more Villains Month previews, visit CosmicBookNews.com.

Anyone know how to make iTunes stop doing this?

Screen Shot 2013-08-11 at 10.32.19 AM

iTunes stops downloading podcasts if you haven’t listened to them for a while.

I don’t check or listen to certain podcasts every week. But I want to keep downloading them, because sometimes they’re no longer available if you miss them the week they’re released (looking at you, “This American Life”). So I’d love to figure out a way to have iTunes keep downloading, even if I’m not listening.

Any ideas?

UPDATE: Whoa, that was fast! Jason Snell found this script to take care of the problem!

Testing to see if automatic cross-posting from gregpak.com happens

So I’ve been upgrading and updating gregpak.com, and this is just a test to see if things are working properly and links are going out to Twitter and App.net.

THIS IS ONLY A TEST.

UPDATE: That worked. Now let’s see if it sends it out again when I edit/update the post. I don’t want it to, but let’s see.