[quote=“Alien”]Actually, a lot of people do have very routine lives in western countries, and here.
I’m positive a lot of this tech will catch on as you’ve seen more and more people (in a very short time of about 3 to 5 years) who use cell phones as extensions of their bodies. People will grow even more dependent on this kind of technology to activate/program other rituals in their daily lives. who originally scoffed at cellphones thinking they would never have need for one, ended up becoming the most avid of all users (text msg especially).
If your cellphone can dial into your home to flip on AC, run a bath, and check if you have beer in the fridge, there’s no telling what else people will want from them.
This is all inevitable ‘progress’. I’m not saying that I personally want to jump on the bandwagon, but I ended up doing just that on every other new tech that’s come out in the past (only) 5 years! And most of you all did too…
cell phone, digital camera, broadband, dvd, wireless…need I go on?
Hmm…[/quote]
Yes, you do need to go on – because you’ve named the technologies that caught on, but not the ones that didn’t.
Digital cameras? They’re an improvement on something that everyone already liked. No more expenses for buying and developing film, and no need to worry whether the guy at the photo lab kept copies of the photos showing you with your favorite sex toy jammed up your. . . .
Cell phones? Useful for everything from making dinner reservations when you’re already on the way to calling the tow truck when the car breaks down.
But what about the dot.com boom? There were all sorts of neat technologies available, most of which have evaporated. Wearable computers? A few geeks have PDAs, but most people have ignored them, and practically nobody has gone beyond those clunky little memo-book types.
You named DVDs, but what about Betamax? What about IOmega’s forty different little formats, like the “Click!” microdiskette?
The problem is, you’ve forgotten all of the dumb ideas that didn’t stick, like Internet-enabled microwave ovens, refrigerators with doors that can switch between transparent and opaque, and cars that require you to fasten your seat belt before they’ll start. Some things make sense, and some don’t. Most of what’s being pushed as “smart house” ideas simply doesn’t make sense.
Twenty years from now, you’ll be able to come back and say, “see? being able to switch on/off any outlet from any location was a great idea! Security cameras in every room are wonderful!” And you’ll be right – but you’ll be skipping over the “cat-eating trashcan”, the “digital picture frame with genealogy capability”, and the “Internet microwave” that deservedly never made it out of Philips’ secret consumer testing lab.