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!