 Science fiction stories deal with the future, and provide a glimpse of what that future may hold for us. A good science fiction story isn't about space, or space travel, or robots, or computers, or gadgets, ... but about the way those things will have an impact on our society, or our day-to-day life.Here's an example. Consider where technology is today, right now, and think for a moment about where it may be in twenty years. We are on the brink of a communications upheaval that will change how we live our lives; it's already begun! We can now be in constant voice contact with anyone else, almost anywhere in the world, just about wherever we are. Communications satellites and handheld location devices mean that we can never be lost, anywhere. Video transmission is not yet that advanced, but the technology exists to actually see anyone, anywhere, whenever you want ... it's just too expensive to make it available to everyone, anywhere, ... yet. Now imagine where we'll be in twenty years. Your handheld device will let you, right now, wherever you are, access all the information on the World Wide Web, as well as connect, by voice (and soon video), to anyone else. Moreover, it will let you make a video record of what you see, and allow you to send it somewhere for safekeeping. Picture a pair of sunglasses that you wear wherever you go. These glasses have a small video lens built in to the frames, and contain a digital transmitter that uplinks with a satellite, sending your video stream to your home, where it is recorded. Everything you see during the course of a day gets sent to your home, and recorded. That's the science fiction device that is the basis for a story. But the story won't be just about the device. The story will be about how our whole society changes as the result of its use! 
The genius of a good science fiction writer is in the way the consequences of a future technology impact peoples' lives. Anyone could have predicted television, back in the thirties. A science fiction writer would have written about the Home Shopping Network, and soap opera addiction!So what effect will our 'video glasses' have on society? Well, consider that most large American cities have a serious crime problem. What would thappen if every act of violence on a person was recorded by the victim, or a bystander? Every mugging, every assault, every murder ... captured on video and recorded remotely, where it couldn't be gotten at! Changes?? They'd be overwhelming. Acts of violence would drop to nothing overnight ... and those few perpetrators stupid enough to still attack someone would be convicted immediately, based on the dramatic video evidence. Cities would become safe places again. Maybe certain groups in society would take it upon themselves to be the video 'eyes' of the city, selling their video record of events (gathered while wandering around), to whomever had need of it. It would give new meaning to the TV six o'clock 'Eyewitness' news broadcast! People would pay extra to gather in places where video glasses weren't allowed, to indulge themselves in a little privacy. The newest fad will be watching 24 hour videos taken by famous people in the course of their day. 'Live a Day in the Life of Leonardo di Caprio!' See what I mean? Science fiction (the good kind) isn't about the gadgets themselves. It's about people ... and how those people react to living in a society that has been changed by technology. As a footnote to this page, the following article appeared in the University of Toronto Alumni Magazine Winter 1999 edition: (a year after the above article was written)  "Some of this year's orientation activities were broadcast live around the world via the internet by a group of innovative electrical and computer engineering students. Using computing and camera technology mounted on their heads and bodies, the students recorded and transmitted images directly online as they observed them. The technology, called Electronic News Gathering wearable systems (ENGwear), is a project of [the university's] pioneering cybernetics lab. For more information about ENGwear, go to http://engwear.org/"
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