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[IP] What's next? Time to dump yo



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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>mcassidy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx or (408) 920-5536.




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