Connectivity Harnessed
May 15, 2011
WAYNE ARNOLD You woke up on May 15, 2031 and stumbled into the shower. As you rubbed the shampoo from your eyes, you could make out the images on the glass wall of the shower stall. Stocks were down on news that Japanese peacekeeping troops were pulling out of Xinjiang. Beijing had put reunification talks with Taiwan on hold while it dealt with separatist Uighur attacks on foreign factories. We recall some of the technological breakthroughs heralded in The Asian Vast Press over the last two decades ... and what really happened. ``The more things change...'' you mumbled to yourself as you walked into the kitchen for a waiting cup of coffee. Gone were the electronic gizmos, the tangled wires that cluttered your house two decades before. No longer did you struggle to master soon-to-be-obsolete devices. Instead, your computer adjusted your surroundings to suit your needs and desires, brewing extra-strong coffee when it sensed you were groggy and raising the temperature of your shower when you were cold. Where was the future shock everyone had predicted, you asked yourself -- the disorientation that was supposed to come with life on the information superhighway? Mankind had sculpted connectivity, harnessed the deluge of information and tamed the runaway beast of gadgetry. You remembered reading articles that explained how your computer would become an extension of your subconscious, organizing your affairs, enhancing your memory and augmenting your perceptions of the world around you -- your personal information agent. No longer did your computer look like a TV welded to a typewriter. It was a black box no larger than a cigarette carton, stuffed with a lifetime of information. But then, you rarely had occasion to look at it. Thanks to wireless technology, you could access it from any room in any building -- a chip in your watch not only had your computer's phone number, but also a code with which to identify you to your machine. You could display tidbits of information on your wristwatch, see it writ large on a conference-room wall or spread it out on top of a table in a cafe. And instead of having to roll a mouse, you could simply point at menus on the screen or tell the computer what you wanted. Totally mobile computing and communications made possible totally mobile living -- a de-emphasis on physical location and a return to man's nomadic origins. After all, you had held the same job in Hong Kong for the past 10 years, yet here you were, finishing a month-long sailing course in Cancun, Mexico. That was in the early afternoons. Mornings were reserved for fishing, since the fish were still biting early in 2016; you did your best work after 3 p.m. Bosses hadn't changed: No matter how much work you could get done from Cancun, yours still made you show up at work once a week. Fortunately, showing up simply meant finding the nearest video-conferencing booth and logging into your company's virtual boardroom. These confabs were typically mundane. Last week, you sat twirling a pen while listening to a three-dimensional projection of your boss. From time to time, you pretended to jot down notes on a screen, where your computer would dutifully record your doodling for later discard. The great thing about video-conferencing was that you could blank out elements you didn't want your boss to see and replace them with other stored images: a suit instead of your windbreaker and coffee in place of the margarita. Off to the bait store down the pier, where no amount of cyberspace was enough to distance yourself from the pungent fumes of squid ripening in the Caribbean sun. A message from your better half lit up your watch: ``Don't forget jalapenos.'' You had both decided long ago that the kind of long-distance relationship made possible by virtual reality was best reserved for professional acquaintances. ``Computer, add jalapenos to my grocery list, please,'' you said softly. Talking to yourself would have felt strange two decades ago, before people started wearing sonic pads over their collarbones. These devices transmitted sound from either a computer or a personal music collection through the skeleton to the ears without being audible to those nearby. You made a mental note to catch a nap on the way to the grocery (technology provided no substitute for picking out fresh produce yourself) and let the computer do the driving. Global positioning satellites had given it keener eyesight than you ever had. In town there were scattered traffic snarls -- Mexico was quaintly behind the times. Traffic cops waved motorists through the impasse, their faces obscured by visors that displayed overhead maps of the jam and relayed instructions from the dispatching center. Figuring you'd make the best of the delay by trading some stocks, you pulled a portable iris scanner from the glove compartment. Better than a finger- or retina print, the unique pattern of your iris verified that you were the one meddling in your precious assets. You felt a bit visionary today, so you sold some of your blue-chip Internet stocks and bought shares in the latest growth industry -- rental homes for the world's new nomads. When it was time for sailing, you swam out to where the boats bobbed blinding-white under the midday sky. Your instructor waved an all-weather scanner over the chip in your watch to charge you for the day's lesson and rentals. ``How does it all work?'' children asked their parents. Only a small few really knew, or needed to know, any more than adults 20 years before could explain the mechanics of a television set. Information had become a transparent utility like the electricity in your walls. The hardware existed in 2011. All it took was a revolution against the computer as an appliance in itself. Once software developers adjusted to the idea of a formless computer, computing became ubiquitous, with public terminals installed in airports, on airplanes and in hotel rooms. With your personal chip, they became extensions of your own computer back home. People used to worry that there wouldn't be enough room in the world's telecommunications network to give everyone access to the Internet. Global information gridlock was predicted. But when existing networks were made more efficient by running voice and data communications simultaneously, new investments in infrastructure easily kept up. Abetting this was the development of new pricing structures for Internet use. Instead of paying for time, which in the old days most people spent waiting in Soviet-style lines for information, users were charged for the amount of information they transmitted or received. When society was left with unobstructed access to information, regardless of location, it had to face a question it had never answered: What was all the information for? Energy once spent in a quest for convenience was spent trying to figure out what a human should do with time. Philosophy and ethics took center stage in public debate. Political scientists spoke of the liberation of the white-collar worker. Philosophers condemned the shibboleth of connectivity. And as people became more mobile and the importance of cities waned, psychiatrists and sociologists bemoaned the end of community. But I have gotten ahead of myself. These philosophical debates came later. On this night, you fell asleep to a decrescendoing program of jazz you asked me to play. Your walls flickered with scenes from your trip to Paris last year. And as you drifted off, you murmured in a voice so low that I had to summon all my years of experience as your computer to understand. You asked me to come back and tell you a little bit about what life would be like. --Mr. Arnulfo writes about technology issues for The Asian Vast Press.
