Track Record
Back in 1999, I wrote a column about the future. Let’s see how my predictions are unfolding…
Remember, this is not science fiction. This is what could easily be real within the next couple of years:
Imagine, if you will, coming home from work in the not-too-distant future. As you step inside the front door, a computer sensor reads your aura (3-D, bio-electrical fields around your body), and recognizes you as you.
The computer deduces from the aura’s shape and intensity that you have a headache caused by stress. So after welcoming you home, your Mac makes a verbal recommendation to add calcium and fluids to your diet to correct the situation.
The computer, well aware of your likes and dislikes, then tells you that your sister will be flying to a nearby city on a business trip next week and asks you if you’d like to take her to dinner.
The computer knows that: 1) you like your sister 2) your sister booked a flight on Acme Airlines last week, and 3) your schedule is free that evening.
The computer also knows that your sister likes Cantonese food, that her birthday is in three weeks, and that her favorite colors are red and silver.
So if you wanted to get her a gift, the computer could arrange to have a small, silver-and-ruby bracelet gift-wrapped and delivered to your home before your dinner with her.
Catching up
Earlier in the day, while your computer was surfing the Web looking out for your interests, it discovered an old friend of yours had published an important article and another old friend just had her first baby. The computer tells you all this as it briefs you on the day’s events while you are dining. You realize that staying in touch is no longer a chore. (Before Facebook)
The following week, while your sister is in the airport waiting for her flight, she sees a kiosk with a built-in monitor, not unlike an automated teller machine. The device invites her to place her arm on a plastic armrest and hold a metal rod at the end. As she views a series of images on the screen, instruments in the rod and sleeve read her physical response to those images. Since she has already entered her charge card number, the machine dispenses a bag of nutrients and vitamins it determined she needed to maintain and improve her health.
When you finally get together — your restaurant reservations and transportation arrangements all previously made and confirmed by your computer (before OpenTable and a wealth of travel web tools)– your sister brings out a hand-held viewer into which she slides a credit card-sized memory storage device. (before smartphones) This device is capable of storing hundreds of hours of video, not just home videos, but videos that are a continuous record of every milestone in her family’s life. When she gives a speech or goes out on a first date or visits a new destination, video records are available for her, just as postcards are now.
She won’t tell you how she did it because it still is classified information. But never again will you miss seeing an important event in her life or the lives of anyone close to you.
All-in-one companion
Your friendly home computer will be your travel agent, personal secretary and medical, spiritual, financial, security, legal and romantic adviser. And because there will be such a demand for content, and individuals will have so much free time (OK got that one wrong) on their hands, your Mac will also become your talent agent.
It will have the ability to edit your creations (photos, stories, music, video, etc.) to professional standards, and to seek out markets in which your art can be sold.
Your primary income will come from your Web site where you post your products, services or advice. And people who link to your site will pay you money if people visit them as a result of your referral.
Because new models for international business, communication and venture capital investments will emerge, inventions and enterprises that might previously have been suppressed because of controlled markets, will now get to market, giving us advances in transportation, energy, education, entertainment, and ecology.
Health, wealth, prosperity and personal fulfillment will be delivered to you daily by your future computer. And as it delivers all this to you and others, it will help bring about an expanded awareness that we all live on the same planet and are dependent upon each other.
And this environment will inspire new concepts of ownership, responsibility
and humanity.
Cool.
And all that before the smartphone or pad or watch and most of the internet!
Future Insights 