Philip K. Dick

Video surveillance is the hot new thing. Tech market think tank ABI Research has just come out with a new study predicting that the global video surveillance market will "expand from revenue of about $13.5 billion in 2006 to a remarkable $46 billion in 2013." In a press release only Philip K. Dick could love, ABI gushes excitedly about all the fun new uses of the vidcams and databases you could be manufacturing, buying, and selling to the surveillance-craving masses.

Predicting where crime would happen next sounds like a wild idea, a concept possible only in the realm of science fiction, like Phillip K. Dick’s short story “Minority Report.” But lately some technology vendors have been combining crime statistics, weather data, geospatial data, and predictive algorithms to create a magical brew that can forecast when and where the next crime wave will most likely hit.