Charles Stross talks about a likely future application:
Add optical character recognition on the fly for any text you look at, speech-to-text for anything you say, and it’s all indexed and searchable. “What was the title of the book I looked at and wanted to remember last Thursday at 3pm?”
Think of it as google for real life.
Of course, technology is creating creates appallingly fascistic possibilities as well, which is unfortunate. But hey, who cares if they lock you up for ThoughtCrime as long as you’ve got access to Borges’ Library? Throw in a weight set and some video games and this is different from my life how?
(He said as he reluctantly left the dark comfort of his office to go to the gym.)