Dream in White

“We may be on the verge of a new era, when the PC will get up off the desktop and allow us to see, hear, touch and manipulate objects in places where we are not physically present. “

Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Corp
Scientific American, December, 2006

Imagine this…

You get to work, and you don’t remember if you locked the back door.  Unfazed, you open an internet link to your robot, fire up the motors, take control via a joy stick and drive it along your hallway, across the kitchen to the back door.  When it’s in sight, you tilt the camera, navigate a little closer and zoom in on the lock.  Sighting the deadbolt in the slot, you relax – and direct your robot to autonomously reverse the route and go into sleep mode.

Mr. Gates, we already have this technology – actually it’s your technology, on our robot.  Welcome to the world of the 914 PC-BOT.

Further imagine this…

You get home late from the office, you’re starving but dinner may have to wait.  As usual, you expect large numbers of emails to be waiting and you expected a number of phone calls to come in during the day.  No problem, you have a 9-series robot!  As you walk into the hallway, the robot moves into the kitchen, which is normally where you like to position it to meet you when you come in. 

You move to the fridge and begin to get food out to prepare for dinner and ask your robot how many emails you got today.  You get an answer – it’s quite a few!  You ask the robot to read out the “From” column in your Outlook and, finding they all sound interesting, you direct your robot to read them to you as you cook dinner.  Not difficult functionality, this is done by hundreds of sight-impaired North Americans every day and it’s a feature you find handy.  Your robot, having access to your VOIP all day, also informs you that you have a number of voice messages, one in particular that you’ve been expecting.  Undeterred, you ask for those too, but with the important one first – introduced and relayed to you directly from your robot’s hard drive.  You ask if there is anything else?  Your robot informs you that the service on your air conditioner is due next week and that a draft email to your contractor from last year is now in your Outlook Drafts folder awaiting you to send it – of course, its flagged for follow-up.

By the time you’re done checking your messages, dinner is ready.  Welcome to digital life!