In my short life computers have gone from a novelty to have in a home to ubiquitous. Even a car ten years old has more computing power than the Apollo space ships and some cars now have more computing power than a desktop computer 10 years ago. Hell my phone has more storage space and ram and is about four times faster than the $1500 486SX my dad brought home in 1994. My phone is also faster than the first computer I built that was a 166Mhz w/MMX in 1998.
Internet is everyplace now. No longer does one have to dial up to get internet. It's just there it's on. With open/free Wifi networks popping up everyplace and mobile phone providers providing internet plans for people on the go. Again the internet on my phone is faster than my dialup 56k modem was in 2000.
Most cash registers have been replaced with computers. Door keys have been replaced with proximity/swipe cards at hotels and many companies. In some city's parking meters have been replaced with a kiosk to print a parking sticker in your window. Many restaurants now page people with cheap short range coaster like pagers when a table is ready. We can chose what we want to watch when we want to watch it with DVR and On-Demand services. A decade ago the promise of the information super highway promised some of these things.
Data coming at us has become much more ubiquitous as this revolution has happened. It's happened so gradually and smoothly few have really noticed.
Many of us now step in to our cars and it will tell us what the outside temperature is. Not what the temperature is at the top of a hill with a weather station that the meteorologist uses to tell you what the temperature was the last time it sent its information in. Most everyone I know has a thermometer on their wall telling them at the very least their indoor temperature but often the outdoor temperature as well and the time which would be no more than a second off because it receives a special radio signal from a clock Colorado that is far more exacting than most of us can even fathom. Those of us who don't have an indoor outdoor thermometer that displays with the day/date/time in a lovely digital format hanging on our walls we go to any number of websites or install some application that will tell us what the outdoor temp is at that weather station just up the road, along with stock prices and the latest headlines.
We can buy GPS and cars with systems that can route us around traffic jams. Or we can see the information about traffic jams on our cell phones and hand held devices to make a choice of how to get around the traffic to get to the lake on that 102 degree day with a little delay as possible. Some radio stations and all satellite broadcast Artist and Song information in a fashion it can be displayed on radios equipped to see the data so you know who your listening too all the time.
I no longer personally know anyones phone number other than my own. Because I have devices that know the names and number for me. This as it turns out isn't always a good thing as I discovered last summer.
I have grown quite used to having all sorts of data that doesn't even require my finger tips to access. I'm also quite used to having all sorts of data at my finger tips. I want more data broadcasts to me, filtered down and displayed on a near continuous basis, of course taking context and location... I'd like to see gas prices scroll by for the zip code I happen to be driving in. I'd like to have a mirad of historical data on hand regarding climate for any place I happen to be. I don't mean looking the data up I mean having a button with current info then another for years past and another button for the forecast for tomorrow and the next several days no digging for it, no googeling, no hunting data down and noaa, just the facts for where I'm at...
Update: Today's rocketboom goes well with my post today and/or vise versa.
Posted by Ben at May 08, 2007 12:22 PM