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In BitTorrent's Vision of 2025, Only Losers Haven't Implanted Their Phones

“My dad doesn’t understand how important my chip is to me. I need it to have friends."
"But DAAaaaAADD!" Image: BitTorrent/Vimeo

Augmented reality is all around us: Google Glass allow users to supplement their field of view with useful information such as maps and waypoints, and certain iPhone apps provide a playful distraction by using data feed into from its camera and other sensors.

But although it seems an inevitability, not much has been explored about 'embedded' augmented reality, where users are near-constantly living in a virtual-meets-analogue world through computer implants in their bodies, and what will happen when it goes mainstream.

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Children of the Machine, an upcoming sci-fi series from BitTorrent, plans to change that. Set eleven years in the future, it aims to address the social and ethical implications of ubiquitous augmented reality abilities.

"I just got my chip last week," a girl gleefully says in the teaser above. She shows the small scar where it was injected into her shoulder. "It's under my skin. I think it's the coolest thing ever."

The clip doesn't go into any technical details, but it's safe to assume that it gives the usual benefits of smartphones or connected devices: sharing content, sending messages, and generally being connected to stuff and people.

In this future, these chips have become something of a necessity for teenagers. "My dad doesn't understand how important it is to me," the girl continues. "It's fun and useful, but I also need it to be social." In the same way that having a smartphone has become a social requirement, chips are necessary for anybody growing up in 2025.

Quickly, the more worrying aspects of these chips emerges. "I need it to have friends," she says. "How am I supposed to communicate?"

Marco Weber, the show's creator, previously told me that the change technology is having on human interactions is going to be a constant theme in Children of the Machine. 

In another clip released last month, the concept of 'jolting' was introduced: a psychedelic-like trip that is brought on by virtual reality technology. In that snippet, a girl was shown who appeared to have developed an insular, narcissistic way of dealing with the world, preferring to shut herself off in a haze of fabricated digital imagery, rather than addressing the physical world around here.

Although the plot hasn't been fully explained, this is presumably because of the apocalyptic event that Weber has previously hinted at: some sort of 'glitch' that affects humanity at the beginning of the 21st century.

'Jolting' returns in this latest trailer, with the new character exhibiting the same glazed over eyes and euphoric expressions shown before. In a blog post, BitTorrent wrote that these chips will "make everything knowable, trackable: forever found. They will also promise new ways of getting lost." Presumably, this is referring to jolting, and the escapism that is allows.

Will we see this near-future world fleshed out further? Right now, it's up in the air: A pilot for Children of the Machine will be released in December, but the rest of the series will only get made if 250,000 BitTorrent users pay a fee in order to fund the project.