If we’re headed toward keeping track of everything (see Google item below), more people will feel so stifled, they’ll want secrecy technology. They’ll want NOT to be know, NOT to be found. So imagine Hide & Sneak devices that lie to global positioning systems. By hacking, overriding, discombubulating, jamming, whatever … you’ll be able to tell Read More …
Everything will be cliche.
Seriously. As image screen gets thinner and lighter, first newspapers and magazines will get replaced by e-paper, which folds and unfolds and presents images in infinite formats. Then people will say, cool! I want to wear this stuff, and they’ll make clothing that displays any image you want. Your hat can show the Mona Lisa Read More …
Every appliance, every car, every person will come with a chip that wirelessly connects to the Internet. Then you’ll be able to Google everything in the world. Who else can has a Zearz Biogoat Grass-Chewing Mower? You can find out and contact them, form a club. Lose something in your house? Google it! Want to Read More …
The world as you see will be radically changed by the Flat-Screen Revolution. J.K. Rowling had it right: People will move in paintings and newspaper pictures. But take it further: Imagine how decals with moving images would make race cars even more of a visual riot. Billboards will move. Bumper stickers. (Once wrote a sci-fi Read More …
Ever notice that once in a while along comes a fad or phenomenon that’s seems inexplicable because it defames something wildly popular? Example, a book from years ago: 101 Uses for a Dead Cat, which is still alive on Amazon. Now some might see the appeal as simple satire, but I think it’s more than that: Some trends get Read More …
Why is gum only a snack or candy substitute? Why can’t it replace an entire meal? You have your chips-and-dip gum for an appetizer. Or, if you prefer, your soup or salad gum. Want bread and butter gum with that? Next it’s steak and potatoes gum, broccoli with cheese sauce gum, and favorite beverage gum. Cap it all Read More …
Why should a watch only tell the time? We’d probably have watch-phones by now, if Dick Tracy’s wrist radio hadn’t overdone the idea to the point of hokey jokiness. How a digital screen, however? Movies seem obvious. But how about the picture-album watch? You push a button, see an image of your wife …your kids … your dog … your Read More …
We’ve seen battles between bots with whirring blades as they roll around on wheels. But far more interesting, I think, would be to see robots that run. On two legs. It’s such a tricky bit of engineering and computer savvy to make a machine that walks. So on your mark, get set, run! Just as Read More …
OK, OK, OK, maybe the physics here won’t work. And the scale might be impossible, too. But if sea levels will rise because of melting ice sheets, how about creating some new ones? Put snow machines all over Greenland, and maybe Alaska and Siberia, too. Maybe even on icebergs at the North Pole. Pile up Read More …
Take the i-Pod Shuffle idea and offer a stream of brain teasers and trivia. The pitch: Entertaining way to sharper your brain. Might be a Jeopardy! version. Or stuff from almanacs and encyclopedias. Games Magazine. Samples from various popular games, such as Scrabble. Tests with word problems from math books. Tricky lateral thinking problems from Read More …
Find a need and fill it is the old inventing adage. In an era of the sky’s the limit, maybe it should be find a fantasy and fulfill it. Skip the obvious sex and love stuff. Instead, really imagine the limits of what’s possible. Ask: If you could have any one super power, what would it Read More …
Let’s hope that ads eventually make all Internet sites free. But now you’ll find publications like magazines that charge dollars for reading current articles, or for accessing archives. How about some ecoonomy of scale? Charge way less, so you get more customers, producing as much revenue if not more. Here’s a way for Paypal, or someone other online paying Read More …
We’re so bombarded with ads, news, messages, airplane and traffic noise, rudeness, and tempting sights and smells, here’s a prediction: Someday we’ll have personal high-tech force fields that selectively screen out undesired sensory experiences. No, not some combo earplug-blindfold-noseplug deal. But a kind of programmable Sensory Sentry or Filter Field — a Globe of Obliviosity? — that lets you have peace and Read More …
As the world changes more and more rapidly, why should buildings be so fixed and permanent? I already see ]perfectly good houses and office buildings get torn down to make way for some new and improved and more profitable endeavor. So why not buildings that can easily be dismantled, altered, modified, moved or otherwise rebuilt? Maybe Read More …