You walk up to your car and touch the handle. Your fingerprints are scanned, and your face is recognized. The door unlocks. The engine normally starts if it is time for you to go somewhere.
This time the car asks, “Where are we going?”
You reply, “Nowhere, I left my glasses.”
The computer replies, “They fell on the floor. You do not normally take your sunglasses in.”
“They need to be cleaned. I also need to get some cleaner for the windshield.”
“I’ll add that to your shopping list.”
“Thanks.”
While walking back to the house you notice the grass needs watered, but it needs to be done in the morning, so you pull out your pen and write a note on what appears to be white cardboard. You then doodle in the corner and what you just wrote disappears and is replaced with a list of several options for lunch.
Back in the house, you glance at the wall, which has a picture of a to-do list with three things on it. One of the items is the reminder to water the grass. It showed up as needing immediate attention since you skipped the prompt asking when you wanted to be reminded and have never put a similar item into the system. You point to that spot on the wall and move a copy of the reminder to tomorrow morning’s to-do list, but leave the original active for now. Another item informs you that your laundry is complete, and tells you what clothes where in the load. Since you are not concerned about any of it wrinkling, you ignore the reminder.
You walk into the kitchen to prepare lunch. You have kept your kitchen pretty low-tech, no automatic choppers, or measuring devices. The little displays to tell you what you need from each cabinet do come in handy though. The flashing LED on the measuring cup makes it easy to find. The oven is pre-heating and everything is going great. Then the rather normal looking wall to your right turns black and a streak of lighting flashes across the wall. The thunder rolls and a giant dollar sign rises from the floor.
Ring tones are nothing like they used to be! You touch the wall to initiate the video conference. Since this is a co-worker, the VP of Sales, you give him access to see you and the room you are in, as is.
“Hey, what’s cookin’ good lookin’?”
“Pizza”
“Smells great! Garlic, oregano, onions… I’ll be right over!”
He walks into the wall and smashes his nose against the screen. You laugh.
“Hey, so really what’s up.”
He casually remarks, “I just sold our new design. Thought you would like to know. See ya.”
“What! What new design?”
“The one you are going to deliver the prototype on next week. It looks like this”
He creates a 3D drawing environment, grabs a few pre-built objects and roughs-out what he thinks it should look like. He also sends you a copy of what the customer had drawn.
An hour later you are done with lunch and headed back to work. All of your applications and data are accessible from anywhere, but working at the office is still easier, since there are less distractions and a lot of the data is hosted there. And local access is still faster than remote, which makes a huge difference with the amount of data you have to process. As the car connects to the monorail and drives you toward the office, you use the computer in the car to start drafting a real design.
The reminder about the grass pops up on your wrist watch and you take a minute to schedule a watering every other day and also set aside fifteen minutes to purchase a webcam and software to monitor the health of your grass and trigger watering and cutting. There is nothing quite like sitting around watching the grass grow.
You should be able to find an all-in-one wireless device that uses “XML for hardware,” a new standard that eliminates the need for drivers. It allows devices to connect directly to each other and to traditional computers, and provide data and services in both directions.
Even your fifteen year old scanner now has an adapter plugged into the USB port so you can scan directly to your phone.
Most of the software applications you use for this job are ones you have bought or built. Since all applications are web-based now, and personal computers are primarily personal application a data servers, you can access your software from anywhere. Of course, local access is usually faster, so you mirror your software on an office computer, but the mirror and home systems share a single license and authentication profile.
Your design looks better than the sketches, but you have a few questions. You save the file on the office system and tag it for review and it immediately shows up on Mr. VP of Sales’ to-do list; an unreciprocated privilege. He calls in about 15 minutes.
“I am going to present this tomorrow morning. It looks great”
“Red or Blue on the base?”
“I was thinking turquoise, but I will have to ask. You can leave it blue for now.”
“Hang on let me show it to you in turquoise.”
You make a quick change and send a low-res image.
“Pretty bad, huh?”
“Yeah, you probably should to go with something darker, like hunter green.”
“OK, I will give it a try, blue is fine for now.”
“Now look at it from overhead. Do you think it is deep enough?”
“I think so.”
“OK”
You hang up and store the text and the snap-shot from this conversation in the project folder.
The car pulls off the monorail and asks you to park.