Imagine waking up to music, music coming from the alarm clock on your cell phone. Instead of going to work, you call in sick; however, you don’t call in sick. You press the “sick” button on the touch screen of your phone, instantly alerting all the employees that you won’t be coming in for the day. You can still work though. People can call you and you can answer; instead of just audio, you can hold your phone out in front of you and see the person you are talking to. It’s not a webcam per se, it’s a “phone cam”.

After a long morning taking calls and answering e-mail through your phone, imagine getting out of bed and fixing yourself cereal. You finish up the milk, but it’s not a big deal. Your refrigerator knows that the milk is gone by tracing its barcode and immediately alerts the supermarket that you need it. After eating, you drive over to the local store and you pick up your already packaged groceries. You checkout by waving your phone over a scanner; this instantly alerts the bank of the transaction. You then drive home while listening to music from your phone that you have plugged into your car.

After taking some more calls and answering e-mail for the afternoon, you receive the daily progress report from your department. You plug your phone into your laptop and download it. You then check your planner, which has the up-to-the-minute calendar of where each member of your family is and should be. You notice your son Billy agreed to stay and tutor after school, knowing that he will be at school for an extra hour. You can make sure he is by checking a map of where each family member’s phone is located; all phones now come with GPS to help keep track of people.

Now imagine Billy up at school; instead of tutoring he is in the library watching a movie that he started downloading this morning. He checks the “Friends” list on his phone and knows where all his friends are and what they are doing. He can see that John is at home, Fred and Melissa are at Fred’s house, and Mark is buying groceries. He does not know what his girlfriend Sue is doing because her phone is off and disconnected. Billy then checks to see who is coming to his party on this weekend; the RSVP list updates on his phone automatically. On his way home he plugs his phone into his car and listens to his history lecture from the afternoon; he recorded it on his cell phone during class.

Continue to III. The Future