While taking a relaxing dump this morning (on company time, of course), I got to daydreaming about a world where every undesirable task under the sun is performed by robots, automatons, and other machines. Such was the case on the Noah's ark-like ship in the film WALL-E. Robots and machines cleaned, prepared meals, served drinks, and even built and maintained one another. The humans didn't have to do shit. They rode around in their awesome chairs with built-in TV screens, lounged by the pool, and essentially lived their whole lives on a cruise ship. I'll never quite figure out how they reproduced. So then along came that damned meddling WALL-E who made such a big deal about re-starting life on Earth. Well, fuck you, WALL-E! Why in the hell would anyone want to leave a spacecraft where every want and need is fulfilled, and start all over from nothing, subsistence-farming and sleeping on the ground?
Hell, despite Royal Caribbean's slipshod management, being on the Liberty of the Seas for a week was possibly the best week of my life. Meals were always available, liquor was plentiful, and everything I wanted was within walking distance. I honestly didn't ever want to get off the ship even when we were docked at various tropical locales. I guess that's why I'm so adamant about my country estate having all the features of a cruise ship—food 24/7, fitness facility, indoor pool, hot tubs, steam room, library, theater, billiard hall, disco, bowling alley—so that I wouldn't have to leave the property.
Also while on the toilet, I contemplated a future in which vehicles would drive themselves. Man has dreamt of such a marvel ever since the dawn of the automobile age, only I feel that we're getting close to a time when it would be practicable. Vehicles could navigate via precise GPS technology, knowing exactly where and when to turn, and would also stop, accelerate, and decelerate in response to one another's presence, made known by radio transmissions, damn near eliminating collisions except under hazardous weather conditions. Traffic jams caused by human error would be a thing of the past. Car owners could even travel in their own cars overnight and sleep. Before every trip, the car would calculate the needed fuel or electrical charge and inform the owner if more was needed to reach the final destination before disembarking. I'm not sure what would be done to protect errant pedestrians, however, who don't use designated crosswalks. Perhaps vehicles would be equipped with infra-red imaging that signals the vehicle to stop when a live presence is detected, simultaneously radioing to rearward vehicles to stop as well. Speed and maneuvering would be governed by a computer, rather than the whim of an impatient, angry, or impaired human operator, eliminating drunk drivers and road rage.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Dreary Monday
This is in no way an earth-shattering observation, but Mondays suck, and rainy Mondays suck Phil's ass.
I love my weekends, because most of them are lived the way I would live if I were retired: get up when I feel like it, eat a leisurely breakfast, and keep my jammies on while I watch an unhealthy amount of TV, leaving the house only for an occasional errand. I'm always a little depressed on Monday, because I have to leave my comfortable little nest after two days of frivolity and crank up the grindstone for another 5 days of drudgery. What really makes this particular Monday dreadful is the rain. When the sun hides behind a thick, wet blanket of gloom, it drains me of the will to do anything productive. Right now I want nothing more than to be at home in the living room with my wife and a movie. I did precisely this yesterday afternoon, and it was wonderful. We went out on a few errands in the gray drizzle, and as soon as we got home, I put on my PJs, made some hot tea, and started up Forgetting Sarah Marshall on FX while the rain fell softly outside. How I long to have the means to spend every rainy day in such a manner, only in my stately home in the country.
This past Saturday evening we went to a little get-together at our friend's home outside of town. She resides in her parents' house in a neighborhood that was all farmland not long ago. Instead of going straight to her house, we meandered around the neighborhood a bit. Lots were big, houses were big, and it was all very quiet and bucolic, stirring up the desire to build a large country house not too far removed from the city, which I wouldn't have any need or desire to leave for days at a time, having everything I need and want on the property. We would probably go to town once a week for a fine dinner or to the theater, but groceries would be delivered. I would even have tailors come to the house, rather than go out to a shop.
O! To live the life of the country gentleman! I would have my friends come out for long weekends of leisure and good times, where they would stay in comfortable rooms and arise to a breakfast buffet. We would spend the days loafing about, playing croquet, knocking golf balls around, swimming, and making idle conversation. And on damp days, I would take a stroll through the fields in my Barbour jacket and wellies, returning to find my afternoon tea on the veranda, where I would sit and watch the rain from my dry, comfortable chair.
I love my weekends, because most of them are lived the way I would live if I were retired: get up when I feel like it, eat a leisurely breakfast, and keep my jammies on while I watch an unhealthy amount of TV, leaving the house only for an occasional errand. I'm always a little depressed on Monday, because I have to leave my comfortable little nest after two days of frivolity and crank up the grindstone for another 5 days of drudgery. What really makes this particular Monday dreadful is the rain. When the sun hides behind a thick, wet blanket of gloom, it drains me of the will to do anything productive. Right now I want nothing more than to be at home in the living room with my wife and a movie. I did precisely this yesterday afternoon, and it was wonderful. We went out on a few errands in the gray drizzle, and as soon as we got home, I put on my PJs, made some hot tea, and started up Forgetting Sarah Marshall on FX while the rain fell softly outside. How I long to have the means to spend every rainy day in such a manner, only in my stately home in the country.
This past Saturday evening we went to a little get-together at our friend's home outside of town. She resides in her parents' house in a neighborhood that was all farmland not long ago. Instead of going straight to her house, we meandered around the neighborhood a bit. Lots were big, houses were big, and it was all very quiet and bucolic, stirring up the desire to build a large country house not too far removed from the city, which I wouldn't have any need or desire to leave for days at a time, having everything I need and want on the property. We would probably go to town once a week for a fine dinner or to the theater, but groceries would be delivered. I would even have tailors come to the house, rather than go out to a shop.
O! To live the life of the country gentleman! I would have my friends come out for long weekends of leisure and good times, where they would stay in comfortable rooms and arise to a breakfast buffet. We would spend the days loafing about, playing croquet, knocking golf balls around, swimming, and making idle conversation. And on damp days, I would take a stroll through the fields in my Barbour jacket and wellies, returning to find my afternoon tea on the veranda, where I would sit and watch the rain from my dry, comfortable chair.
Friday, September 10, 2010
If I Can Dream
I try to stay up-to-date with technological advances, since they seem to be rolling out at exponential speed these days. The more I read about what's just come out, the more I daydream about what's around the corner.
I've recently gotten interested in e-books, but I haven't purchased any. I managed to collect the complete Disney comic work of Carl Barks and Don Rosa in individual PDFs for free online. I still like the option of a hard copy, since I enjoy the experience of holding a book and also am not impressed by the e-readers currently on the market, but when I finally get an iPod Touch I'll start carrying around e-books, since I won't need a separate device to read them. Imagine sitting on the john and having your whole comics collection right there in your pocket! I hope that in the near future, when you buy a hard copy book, you'll receive a unique code to download the book for free in electronic format from the publisher's website. I don't know how they'll protect themselves against piracy, but I don't care either.
While on the subject of e-books, I, like everyone else, have far more printed books than I do e-books, and wish I could have them all in digital format. I dream of an affordable at-home device that can somehow scan an entire book in minutes into color images, which you would run through software to make a searchable PDF. Then, I could have every single book, magazine, comic book, and archived document I own in electronic format, which I would carry on a high-capacity iPod. Last December, Toshiba developed the technology for 128gb flash memory. This means that in the next few months, Apple will likely debut a 128gb iPod Touch. I'll jump on a 128-gig, but I can't honestly say that would be big enough to carry my entire media library right in my pocket. I wish for an iPod Touch with enough memory to hold every single audio track, movie, TV show, video clip, photo, e-book, and e-comic in my possession. Such a device would also have front and rear-facing cameras at least 10 megapixels, and HD video recorder, and be equipped with a battery that can play videos constantly for 16 hours on a single charge. I figure this dream machine would have to have a good 500GB of storage, and is probably 5-10 years away. There do exist devices not made by Apple with 500GB of space, but they have firmware reliability issues, and they're hard-drive based, not flash-based.
It seems that the internet is very gradually replacing cable and broadcast television. Most TV shows can be enjoyed online within days of their original broadcast (except those produced by HBO, who are a bunch of greedy bastards). I dream of a day when major networks simulcast all programming via streaming video, and paid cable TV service will become extinct. I'm already seriously considering getting a quality antenna and cutting off our expensive satellite service, watching cable network programs online.
VOIP has slowly been catching on as a cheaper alternative to cell phones. Skype seems to be the dominant favorite. I don't know if cellular carriers will ever go for this, but I dream of a day when we pay something like $30 or $40 a month for unlimited wireless internet, accessed with the aforementioned iPod, and no phone service and make our calls for free via VOIP. It's sort of already possible but not in the convenient, seamless fashion I dream of.
I also wish for my automobile to make the leap into the 21st century. I'm not sure if this already exists, but I want it equipped with a touchscreen in the dash, to which I could wirelessly connect an iPod or iPhone and use all its functions: phone, music, video, internet, apps, etc. With it I would receive the aforementioned streaming TV programming if I wanted to catch the news. I am aware of FloTV, but I don't want to pay for it. An external keyboard would rise out of the center armrest when needed. If I'm playing a movie and a call comes in, the movie would automatically pause and the caller ID would display in large letters, with answer and ignore buttons. The caller's voice would feed into the stereo speakers. The touchscreen would also function as a backup camera. In addition to the backup camera, however, my dream car would also have a video periscope—a weatherproof camera with night vision and 360-degree swivel controlled by a joystick—which would allow me to scope out traffic conditions in all directions. It would be one of those tiny cameras at the end of a tube, so it would look just like an antenna. I would actually have a separate GPS screen so that I wouldn't have to pause a movie to make sure I'm on the right track. I would also have a scanner & printer installed in the glove compartment, to which I could connect a laptop. Of course this would all be housed in a big black SUV with dark windows and badass accessories such as a brush bar and spotlights.
What else does the future of media and entertainment hold in store? We are already witnessing the slow death of the movie rental store. Perhaps movie theaters will go extinct, replaced by large-screen LCD or plasma TVs in the home on which you would view new releases streaming from the studio's website for a fee. In 10 or 15 years, perhaps Netflix will offer instant streaming of every American and English film and television episode ever released, so no waiting 1 or 2 days for a DVD copy of some obscure indy film. Book stores will fade away as older books become available electronically. Newspapers will also die off slowly, or possibly survive as subscription-based electronic news sources if they offer writers and stories good enough to pay for. As more and more books are digitized, physical libraries may disappear as well, replaced by servers full of electronic content, or perhaps the buildings will remain but their cases of books will be replaced by rows & rows of computer stations (half of them occupied by literate bums). I imagine copyrighted material will be in a read-only, non-downloadable format. This would definitely be convenient—no more college students schlepping to the library at midnight or grade-schoolers making their parents drive them to the library for a mindless school project. I also hope for all the old microfiches to be converted to PDFs. Imagine having access to the entire printed contents of the Library of Congress and the National Archives from your living room!
I've recently gotten interested in e-books, but I haven't purchased any. I managed to collect the complete Disney comic work of Carl Barks and Don Rosa in individual PDFs for free online. I still like the option of a hard copy, since I enjoy the experience of holding a book and also am not impressed by the e-readers currently on the market, but when I finally get an iPod Touch I'll start carrying around e-books, since I won't need a separate device to read them. Imagine sitting on the john and having your whole comics collection right there in your pocket! I hope that in the near future, when you buy a hard copy book, you'll receive a unique code to download the book for free in electronic format from the publisher's website. I don't know how they'll protect themselves against piracy, but I don't care either.
While on the subject of e-books, I, like everyone else, have far more printed books than I do e-books, and wish I could have them all in digital format. I dream of an affordable at-home device that can somehow scan an entire book in minutes into color images, which you would run through software to make a searchable PDF. Then, I could have every single book, magazine, comic book, and archived document I own in electronic format, which I would carry on a high-capacity iPod. Last December, Toshiba developed the technology for 128gb flash memory. This means that in the next few months, Apple will likely debut a 128gb iPod Touch. I'll jump on a 128-gig, but I can't honestly say that would be big enough to carry my entire media library right in my pocket. I wish for an iPod Touch with enough memory to hold every single audio track, movie, TV show, video clip, photo, e-book, and e-comic in my possession. Such a device would also have front and rear-facing cameras at least 10 megapixels, and HD video recorder, and be equipped with a battery that can play videos constantly for 16 hours on a single charge. I figure this dream machine would have to have a good 500GB of storage, and is probably 5-10 years away. There do exist devices not made by Apple with 500GB of space, but they have firmware reliability issues, and they're hard-drive based, not flash-based.
It seems that the internet is very gradually replacing cable and broadcast television. Most TV shows can be enjoyed online within days of their original broadcast (except those produced by HBO, who are a bunch of greedy bastards). I dream of a day when major networks simulcast all programming via streaming video, and paid cable TV service will become extinct. I'm already seriously considering getting a quality antenna and cutting off our expensive satellite service, watching cable network programs online.
VOIP has slowly been catching on as a cheaper alternative to cell phones. Skype seems to be the dominant favorite. I don't know if cellular carriers will ever go for this, but I dream of a day when we pay something like $30 or $40 a month for unlimited wireless internet, accessed with the aforementioned iPod, and no phone service and make our calls for free via VOIP. It's sort of already possible but not in the convenient, seamless fashion I dream of.
I also wish for my automobile to make the leap into the 21st century. I'm not sure if this already exists, but I want it equipped with a touchscreen in the dash, to which I could wirelessly connect an iPod or iPhone and use all its functions: phone, music, video, internet, apps, etc. With it I would receive the aforementioned streaming TV programming if I wanted to catch the news. I am aware of FloTV, but I don't want to pay for it. An external keyboard would rise out of the center armrest when needed. If I'm playing a movie and a call comes in, the movie would automatically pause and the caller ID would display in large letters, with answer and ignore buttons. The caller's voice would feed into the stereo speakers. The touchscreen would also function as a backup camera. In addition to the backup camera, however, my dream car would also have a video periscope—a weatherproof camera with night vision and 360-degree swivel controlled by a joystick—which would allow me to scope out traffic conditions in all directions. It would be one of those tiny cameras at the end of a tube, so it would look just like an antenna. I would actually have a separate GPS screen so that I wouldn't have to pause a movie to make sure I'm on the right track. I would also have a scanner & printer installed in the glove compartment, to which I could connect a laptop. Of course this would all be housed in a big black SUV with dark windows and badass accessories such as a brush bar and spotlights.
What else does the future of media and entertainment hold in store? We are already witnessing the slow death of the movie rental store. Perhaps movie theaters will go extinct, replaced by large-screen LCD or plasma TVs in the home on which you would view new releases streaming from the studio's website for a fee. In 10 or 15 years, perhaps Netflix will offer instant streaming of every American and English film and television episode ever released, so no waiting 1 or 2 days for a DVD copy of some obscure indy film. Book stores will fade away as older books become available electronically. Newspapers will also die off slowly, or possibly survive as subscription-based electronic news sources if they offer writers and stories good enough to pay for. As more and more books are digitized, physical libraries may disappear as well, replaced by servers full of electronic content, or perhaps the buildings will remain but their cases of books will be replaced by rows & rows of computer stations (half of them occupied by literate bums). I imagine copyrighted material will be in a read-only, non-downloadable format. This would definitely be convenient—no more college students schlepping to the library at midnight or grade-schoolers making their parents drive them to the library for a mindless school project. I also hope for all the old microfiches to be converted to PDFs. Imagine having access to the entire printed contents of the Library of Congress and the National Archives from your living room!
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