Fiction: The Dawn of the IntelePal
2016: The alarm sounds as at 6:07. Your alarm clock has been monitoring your REM sleep patterns and is attempting to wake you at a time that is better suited to putting you in a rested vs. groggy state. Your alarm clock has also been checking your schedule, the weather, traffic and transit conditions to determine if there are any variables that could effect your travel time to your first appointments today and adjusting its time appropriately based on what it already knows of your morning habits.
The various systems in your house have been talking back and fourth learning your habits over the past few months and have determined that the correct time to wake you up was exactly at 6:07 to music the system knows you like. The alarm clock is really much more than an alarm clock, though. It’s a small seeing, hearing, monitoring static robot called an intelepal - part of a very sophisticated network of information appliances. And although it has no arms, legs or way of moving around it can see, hear and talk with you and when by connecting to the other intelligent appliances in your home and office. Together they all work together to create your own personal benevolent big brother.
The brains of your intelepal come from sophisticated software running on you home computing network. Your home has a few of these bots scattered around always within earshot. Sophisticated software runs across your network using all the CPUs in your house to run amazingly sophisticated applications that can understand your input using such different measures such as as realtime facial, gesture, speech, manner and emotional recognition.
The intelepal is really the most interesting technology you now have in your home, but its real brains come from special applications that you downloaded from the internet. People all around the world collaborate on building programs for the pals. How your pal behaves is a function of the freeware “Thinks” you download into its ability matrix. The alarm clock was just an application. It can do many things such as monitor the children, keep an eye on your home, interact with your personal banking to pay the bills, read your mail, make internet calls. Because your intelepal is really software tied to hardware that sees, hears and talks there is a version that lives on your mobile phone, in your car and wherever else you need it. It lives on your network all it needs is a connection.
Around 2012, marketers starting building applications for consumers which they could download to learn about products or get customer service. The Intelepals evolved to protect consumers from being bombarded with to much information. The initial intelepals will simply agent applications that let you do simple things. In 2010, a company launched the Intelepal brainkit that allowed everyone to craft what were called “Thinks”. These “Thinks” were user built expert systems that could enable the intelepal do new things. By downloading new Thinks people could extend their pals in a limitless fashion. The ability matrix was simply the collection of all the Thinks the Intelpals were capable of. One of the most popular applications for early intelepals was as a fashion advisor. The “looking great” Think was very popular in helping people pick the perfect tie for that power meeting. The available thinks for intelepals rapidly expanded from life coaching to assisting parents to entertaining. Intelepals and their activity matrixes quickly became as diverse as their owners.
In 2014 because of additional massive leaps in home computing power and massive storage and bandwidth capabilities the core thinking power of the intelepals started to also evolve. The ability to map and profile their owners allowed the Intelepals for the first time to take on the role of personal proxy; allowing them to learn and anticipate your behavior and understand your likes and dislikes. Intelepals quickly evolved into being highly trusted personal advisors.
It was also at this time that the ability to truly filter all information through choice started the shift away from mass media to massive media. The traditional media companies were no match for the 400 million consumers who were actively using intelepals to filter and seek content to fit the desires of their masters. The Intelepals started the end of broadcast media. The intelepals also started the massive shift towards consumer AI as a practical tool. The intelepals started a revolution that was as profound as the industrial age the age of intelligent personal robots had begun.
Epilogue:
Why am I writing fiction on a corporate blog? Simply to give you a different perspective. Thinking about interactive advertising is really about thinking way beyond what we consider innovative today. The only way to predict the future is to invent it… and that is by far my favourite part of this job.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 10:02 pm and is filed under The Future. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 8th
2007 at 2:11 pm
Some random, odd, wild thoughts for the future! I got carried away rambling about the future computer hardware though…..
I see the rich having a tiny chip implant that contains something like a private key. Devices and other such luxuries (cars?) are programmed with your public key so that when you walk near them, they automatically activate. Let’s forget about the obvious security implications here and concentrate on the fun details!
Your home computer will be a server integrated into the house. It’ll be CPU/DISK/MEMORY pluggable, and could contain multiple CPUs and Gbs of memory. The operating system can isolate individual CPUs per person, or use multiple CPUs per application automatically. Disks are removable, though by then disks won’t be disks, they’ll be some form of crystal/material storing data at the atomic level. Users won’t care how or where files are stored; unlike today.
You’ll access your computer via wireless dumb terminals located throughout the house. A dumb terminal is a large screen, fixed to the wall or on a desk and it functions as a terminal, a media centre (DVD or whatever’s hot at the time, which will presumably be much faster by then) and a TV. You’ll either use wireless keyboard/mouse combination or something more akin to virtual input devices (detects where you move your hand on the desk and detects when you push a finger down on the desk. It may even project the image of a keypad on the desk).
Joysticks will be replaced by Nintendo Wii type controllers but steering wheels will still be available.
You are automatically logged on when you start using a terminal through your public/private key. All family members can use a different terminal at the same time. The server can support multiple concurrent users.
You’ll carry a wafer thin, tiny PDA, which contains Gbs of data, with the equivalent CPU and memory capability way beyond today’s newest PCs. When you walk into the house, your PDA will automatically synch wirelessly using the public/private key.
Your watch will be paper thin and will automatically wirelessly authenticate and use the server as a time source when in the house. It can function as a basic PDA, receiving and displaying simple messages.
Your watch and PDA will use GPS type systems to isolate your location and automatically download information: weather, shopping, hotels, news, sports etc.
All of your files are stored on the server; you don’t care where they are. If you insert a media (e.g. DVD) into the terminal, the server automatically rips the songs and stores them for you. You can choose them to be public (all family members) or private. At the same time, they are automatically uploaded to your PDA if present and requested. Any other family members in the house will be asked if they wish to have the new songs uploaded to their PDAs.
Everything will be wireless!
October 16th
2007 at 7:45 pm
Most of the world has never made a phone call.
Techno-love like this is what will be our downfall.
Go spend some time in the trees to see what’s it’s really all about.
This is NOT the future.
Please, stop playing video games and watching the films that fill your head with this meaningless idiocy.
October 17th
2007 at 8:48 am
That’s a really good idea, actually. How long would it take to get a tree outfitted with broadband, wifi and an XBOX360? I’m not much of a gamer, but I could kick any monkey’s ass at Halo 3.
October 17th
2007 at 9:41 am
Interesting comments - I guessed you missed the point about the post being fiction. Have fun in the trees. I think our efforts will be better served inventing, imagining and creating.
October 19th
2007 at 3:18 pm
Fiction? I’m sure that is guise you’ve wrapped it in, but this firm is so focused on technology and almost always misses the human element with respect to your output.
Invent, imagine, create: do so, don’t forget that it’s not about technology, it’s about people.