A day in the life of your future, according to CES 2012
What if all the hottest trends and products from this year's CES became part of our daily lives? Here's a look at the life you may be leading three years from now.
- Finalist for the Nesta Tipping Point prize and a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
LAS VEGAS--What would the world look like a few years from now if all the emerging technologies we saw at CES this year became as ubiquitous as Android phones, iPads, and DVRs?
Well, let's pretend it's a January morning three years from now. You might wake up to a hot breakfast freshly extruded by your new MakerBot 3D food printer--hopefully you remembered to refill the flavor cartridge the previous night or you could get a mouthful of a bland protein construction.
Next you'll probably turn to your Yoga. Not the ancient practice of physical, mental, and spiritual balance, but the tablet/laptop computer hybrid that became more popular than the iPad last year.
If you're into the meta thing, you could use your Yoga to play a yoga video, but you'd probably rather use a larger screen--a much larger screen like the 96-inch OLED taking up most of your wall.
Besides, your OLED wall is also equipped with an advanced gesture-recognition system that can identify each pose you attempt and offer feedback to make sure you're getting the maximum benefit out of your routine.
Yes, it's irritating to have that Siri-like voice constantly telling you to lower your pelvis, but that's why you invested in a digital personal trainer with wearable haptic feedback--your workout outfit communicates with the TV's gesture recognition software and gently applies pressure to the correct muscles until you move them into proper position.
Once your workout is complete, your digital personal trainer will communicate the total amount of calories burned back to the MakerBot to make sure it prints out a meal with the proper amount of vitamins, protein, and hydration to keep you balanced.
Next, it's time to turn your attention to the wider world and see what the news of the day is. Using the embedded invisible keyboard on your huge OLED touch screen, or maybe the featureless surface of its control pad, you chuckle thinking back to the days when QWERTY keyboards and confusing arrays of buttons cluttered your life. You look for an interesting news stream via your TV's built-in Bittorrent software.
You've got an appointment across town shortly and notice your Huawei phone running the latest version of Android--Waffle 12.2--is almost out of juice. You toss it somewhere in the direction of the wireless charging zone on your end table to power up.
Fortunately, you've still got access to all your texts and everything else you were working on with your phone using Bluestacks, which syncs and runs all your Android applications on your Windows 8(Service Pack 9)-based Yoga.
Now, what to wear for that appointment? It looks warm enough out your window, but who knows what the future holds, right? Good thing you're looking out an Internet-connected smart window that will gladly superimpose a weather forecast over the view of your neighbor doing Zumba in her front yard--that is so 2011.
In your rush to get out the door, you almost spill the cup of coffee in your hand all over your Yoga. Probably a good idea to set that hot cup down, so you reach into a drawer and pull out one of your old BlackBerry devices to use as a coaster.
As soon as you've gathered yourself and are all set to go, you grab your Yoga and phone, and tap the app that starts your car, unlocks the door, and starts up your favorite Spotify playlist featuring the hottest new artist of 2015--Eric Mack and the Trucks.
Unfortunately, on your way across town, you realize you've forgotten to feed your robot dinosaur back home! Thank goodness it's got an app that's supported by your car's QNX-based app platform. Without taking your eyes off the road or your hands off the wheel or forgetting 3-year-old ad slogans, you use the car's voice command to feed your toy robot dino his toy food in an otherwise empty house miles away--because we will totally have our priorities in line in the future.
It is indeed a bright future--hope you're wearing your 3D, augmented reality-equipped shades. Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go learn to play guitar.