What's next? Time to dump yo

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Posted on Tue, Sep. 09, 2003
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What's next? Time to dump your wallet

By Mike Cassidy
Mercury News

I'd love to embrace the future, but honestly I'm too busy dealing with the 
present.

I'm a freak in Silicon Valley, I know. This is Tomorrowland, a place where 
every other brain is focused on what's to come.

Me? I'm still trying to figure out how we got to a place where 135 people 
can run for governor, where a man called Dr. Phil becomes the arbiter of 
our nation's mental health and where it's most hip to join a 
cell-phone-arranged ``flash mob'' for a brief and inexplicable public 
demonstration. (Is this, by the way, how we got 135 candidates for governor?)

Let me back up for a minute. I've been reading the news magazine published 
by the AOL-Time-Warner-CNN-Atlanta Braves company. (Remember when Time 
magazine was a product of Time Inc.? Simple, wasn't it?)

Anyway, Time devoted most of a recent issue to ``What's Next?'' It's a 
valuable exercise. At the very least, knowing what's coming provides us 
with time to figure out how to avoid it.

OK, the news isn't all bad. In the next two years, Time tells us, gardening 
is going to be cool. That I can live with.

But Lucha Va Voom is going to be cool, too. That I can't live with.

What? You don't know Lucha Va Voom? Time calls it ``a raucous stage show'' 
that combines ``midgets, strippers and Mexican wrestlers.'' Oh, and it's in 
L.A. (But you knew that.)

Then of course, there are the gadgets -- the improvements we simply won't 
be able to live without.

None other than Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems' chief scientist, weighs in with 
the prediction that your mobile phone will replace your wallet.

``It will become a transaction hub, holding your ID -- are you an organ 
donor? -- digital cash, credit-card numbers and bank-account information.''

And I don't doubt it. But it leaves me wondering: Is the killer app here 
that I can lose absolutely everything I own by misplacing one handy device?

Not to worry, says Paul Saffo, another local thinker who thinks about the 
future. He says the combination of the wireless Web and sensor technology 
will lead to global positioning systems on a chip.

``We're getting close to putting GPS inside any arbitrary object, like 
keys,'' Saffo tells Time. ``If you lose your keys, you could just access 
the Web and ask where they are.''

Which sounds good, but I worry about the effect on my marriage. Fully half 
my conversations with my wife have to do with keys and their locations.

``Hon? Where are my keys?''

``I didn't move them.''

``You sure? They were right here on the thingamajig.''

``Did you check your dresser . . .''

How will we fill the quiet hours?

I suppose we could garden. Or we could hunt for our 
cell-phone-wallet-organ-donor-card. And there's always Lucha Va Voom.

Sure, I have my doubts about the show. Then again, there's no time like the 
future.

Hey! Have an only-in-Silicon Valley story? Contact Mike Cassidy at 
<mailto:mcassidy () mercurynews com>mcassidy () mercurynews com or (408) 920-5536.




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