Where's my web-connected fridge? I want to be able to check my email when I'm rummaging through my limited collection of food stuffs during a late-night snack attack.
We've been hearing so much about Google's recent exploits with cars that drive themselves and now, most recently, Google Glasses, a heads-up display that's designed to integrate the real world with the virtual one.
I'd probably just use it to check hockey scores on the bus.
But it must be said, there's a great transformation occurring all around us. It almost seems as if the death of the personal computer is on hand because, really, everything's a computer now.
Your car, your camera, radios, televisions, bus stops. How long will it be before someone invents a GPS tracked lawn mower that automatically keeps your property in perpetual golf-course condition? (Patent pending, Dragon slayers.)
Ah yes, and the cloud, that ethereal concept of making our digital applications available on-line, accessed at anytime from anywhere using an increasingly wide array of devices.
It invites imagining the death of the personal computer, replaced by various terminals: one in your car, one on your phone, tablet, etcetera.
For years we've been promised home appliances that automatically report faults and register their own warranties. It could bring a whole new dimension to stories of harlequin romance, with repair people showing up completely unexpectedly to tell you that the plumbing needs work.
Lines are blurring as the growing power and simplicity of our technologies comes to mean that one-trick ponies like televisions, radios, telephones and romance novels are all being rolled into singular devices.
It begs a couple questions: first, how much of our own lives we're willing to surrender to these cold and heartless calculators, and secondly, whether or not they would do a better job of running the world than our politicians.
"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
What if our devices had an agenda? I can picture waking up three hours late one morning as my alarm clock buys time for the fridge to sufficiently ensure my leftover food is rotted enough that I catch a stomach ache.
Getting in my car that drives itself, the doors would lock until I found myself stranded under the blazing hot Okanagan sun with nary a drop to drink and miles to go from civilization.
Pulling up the GPS on my phone to direct me to safety, I'd see only a map of Kansas, with a blue dot mockingly placed outside its lines. Calling for help, I'd be answered by Apple's Siri, who would quickly remind me what a constant disappointment I've been.
I guess in a situation like that, I'd be inclined to reach for the tinfoil hat. But realistically speaking, the possibilities are actually quite compelling.
If a house can manage itself through a wireless grid of communication devices, so can a city. So can a country. So can the world.
If a technician can conceivably show up at your house to repair your fridge before it breaks, couldn't food aid, medicine and water presuppose a drought, famine or natural disaster?
Of course it could.
