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Dean and I were working at his dining room table last week in between spurts of conversation about the future. Erica walks in, listens for a sec and then contributes a thought that went something like this: In the past computers were large and the goal was to make them smaller. In the future the computer will be large again. The difference is that this time we’ll be living in the computer.

She happily walks away and I sat there delighted by the imagination. Erica does this to me all too regularly. That’s right, I thought. In the future our entire human environment will be interactive.

In an article based on the book, Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, Adam Greenfield writes:

“Everyware” is an attempt to describe the form computing will take in the next few years. Specifically, it’s about a vision of processing power so distributed throughout the environment that computers per se effectively disappear. (A List Apart: Articles: Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing)

Robert Schank, a leading researcher in artificial intelligence and professor in the school of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, writes:

Fifty years from now, knowledge will be so easy to acquire that one will be able simply to say aloud whatever one wants to know and hear an instantaneous response from the walls –enhanced by a great deal of technology inside those walls, of course. [The Next Fifty Years, 2002]

In the future, our environment will be alive. All of our appliances, the walls of our houses, the cars we drive, will be portals to humankinds’ knowledge base easily accessible by voice commands.

Imagine yourself toasting bread in the kitchen as you mull over how to proceed with your new church plant. You turn to the toaster, What do you think?
“About what?” The toaster says.
“How long should I work with my core team before we go public?”
“Well, do you want them light or dark?” The toaster asks.

OK, that was tongue-in-cheek, but a few decades from now, the first time a wall talks back to you, remember this post. There is an old saying, the walls have ears. I think that in the future, not only will the walls be listening, they’ll be speaking too.

What do you think?

see you in the mystic…

Alex
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Upcoming events you don’t want to miss:

Join ERWIN and ALEX MCMANUS in Orlando, Florida on February 7-8 for a new National Conference called HUMANA 2.0. Readers of “Into the Mystic” are the first to know about the “Petaflop” discount for this national convergence scheduled for February 7-8 in Orlando, Fla. Register before September 15 and you’ll save well over $100.00 per registrant. Speakers: Erwin McManus, Lead Pastor of Mosaic, Gerardo Marti, author of A Mosaic of Believers, Moi, and others.

The Summer discounts for the Makers of Fire tour expire in a few days. Register before 31 August and save $30.00 on these regional events. Join the IMN team in Chattanooga, Detroit (area), Montreal, Kansas City (area), or Providence.

Needed: Heroes for a quest to save the universe one planet at a time. Safe return doubtful. Apply now for the second flight of the 2007 7-Day Mentoring Immersion in Orlando or Los Angeles. Seating is limited. The deadline is September 15.

Meet your favorite bloggers –or as we like to call them, voxers –and listen to good music. Hang out with us in Orlando on the weekend of February 9-11, 2007 for the first ever VWMJ (VOXTROPOLIS WORLD MUSIC JAM)–a music jam for independant artists and a connection point for the cyber city.