Personal Electronic Companions

     It is now commonplace to see business travelers pull out a wireless device and retrieve information from the Internet. With these handy little machines one can  not only look up prodigious amounts of information but also send and receive  e-mail. As sophisticated as these devices already are, they are only the tip of  the iceberg of connectivity that lies just below us. Before long, it will be  commonplace to see affluent teenagers carrying personal “electronic companions.” An order of magnitude greater in function than the personal digital assistants  used in today’s world of business, these small devices are going to create a new  wave of personal communications unlike anything we have yet experienced.

     Small enough to easily fit in a student backpack, these new “companions” will be able to access specifically formatted information on the Internet, send and receive e-mail, and support chat sessions. They will also know where they are physically located because included in the device will be a Global Positioning System, which constantly calculates the handheld device’s current position. Over time, these  devices will become electronic clones of their owners, remembering what books are purchased, which movies are seen, where regular stops are made during the  day, and so on. These devices will remember where one goes, what one does, and even what one thinks about the quality and importance of the advertisements that  are constantly being streamed through them.

     As Orwellian as this may sound, such devices will be quite common within five years. Evolution encourages their growth. Now that human consciousness is directly involved in the processes of evolution, however, there is always the  promise that this brave new world of pervasive computing will lead to more freedom and not to a world of Big Brother.

[From The Spirit of the Internet, Chapter 7, “The Internet as a Cathedral.”]