In the 1984 cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer , author William Gibson describes a future in which people can acquire knowledge by buying special chips called "microsofts" that plug into a surgically installed jack behind the ear. Once you plug in the chip, your brain can access its database and - voila! Knowledge!
I recently visited the Greek island of Santorini. The island is best known as a sunny destination for jet-setting holiday makers who lounge in idyllic hotel rooms perched on the sides of steep and majestic cliffs. But historians, geologists and archaeologists know Santorini as the site of one of the most horrible disasters in human history.
You've no doubt heard of the "$100 laptop" project. The idea is to help poor kids around the world by providing them with simple, durable, usable and wireless laptops for downloading and using textbooks and educational software, playing games and communicating.
You may have heard about the extreme telecommuter lifestyle and thought to yourself, "Wow, I would love to do that, but, nah, I could never make it happen." Wrong job. Young kids. Can't afford it.
MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte railed against complexity in mobile phones, recently, and said that "simplicity is the biggest challenge that handset makers face."
An April 2007, Time magazine feature called, "The Hyperconnected," was illustrated with a picture of a person's wrist handcuffed to a mobile device. This image faithfully conveys a common and growing reaction to the explosion in connected devices and communication applications in our culture.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates expressed his goal many years ago to put "a PC on every desktop, a PC in every home" -- all running Microsoft software, of course. He didn't mention a PC on every driveway.
Thanks to advances in mobile computing, telecommunications and the Internet, it's possible for some lucky professionals to enjoy what has become known as the "extreme telecommuting" lifestyle.
When is it OK to talk in public? To have an audible ring tone? To reply to a text message? Rational people disagree -- strongly. As the war between these two tribes grinds on, new battlefields are opened.
Religious devotees around the world enjoy expressing their faith with customized religious mobile phones, which may play religious ringtones, carry scripture or provide guidance, content filtering and other services specific to each religion. These phones are customized and marketed directly to religious communities in various parts of the world.
I wrote a column last week called, "Why not give users what they want?," in which I whined and complained about a long list of common-sense features missing from major products. One of those features was a "snooze button" for Google Calendar. Now they've got it. But there's a catch.
Bloggers are digital-era sweatshop workers, according to a story last week in the New York Times. "They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece - not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop ... Some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly."
A Google Maps mashup called the Map Channels Hotels Directory shows you all hotels with availability listed in order of price. Just punch in the city, the check-in date and the number of nights you'll be staying, and it will lay out all your options. Boy, I wish I had known about this a month ago.
Flashy new technology always gets attention. But after the chatter fades, users are often left with frustration over products' failure to do basic, common-sense functions.
For some of us, it's that magical time of year. Better than the summer holidays, better than Father's or Mother's Day -- even better than your own birthday.