5 things I wish for in the near and not so near future

In no particular order or priority.

I am currently on vacation, spending time with family and friends, and approaching things a little bit differently. By doing something else than going to work and not going about the normal routine (which I really enjoy, don´t get me wrong), you get new ideas on how to approach things, which is great. The small deviation in how to approach a problem can get you into new areas of unexplored ground. Here another day, inspired by Thinkertoys, I took another way to work. I drove passed a building I had never seen before with a name on it. I started thinking and it gave me an idea of a company name dealing with a business idea I have been puzzling with for a while. Small change may yield inspiring side-effects.

Speaking of business idea, I thought I would like to share the tings that I would like to have, of which some exists, but most don't. Some of the products or solutions are things I want and will probably get in the near future, some are products where the technology is and may never become available. Some of the things may address a small and not very important part of everday life, others may affect the way we live. Some of these things that I suggest may already exist, then excuse me for my incompetence and inadequate investigation of prior art. To avoid stepping on to many toes, I have chosen not to go into areas that may offend groups of people committing to a specific religion or political direction, maybe with the exception of public transportation :-)

Wireless everything

Everytime I want to install a new piece of equipment in my house, the thing that caused me the most headache is wiring. Coax for television, cat 5e for networking (no, Gigabit WiFi is not available outside laboratories, at least not to my knowledge), wiring for speakers, and of course, the infamous houshold power. And for crying out loud, when are we going to standardize on power transformers for DC devices, and I am not just talking of cellphones here (where they, believe it or not have agreed on a common standard). I think i have at least 50 different transformers in the house, where at least 15 of them are in use regularly, most of them ranging between 5 and 12 volts and 0.1 to 1.2 amps. None of them has a common physical interface. All these transformers make parts of my office space into a mess. By not being constrained by cabling, you can probably mount heating devices, lighting, stereo systems and everything else so that it will be more energy efficient, but also more pleasing from an aesthetic point of view. Giving what I save on my electrical bill I may no spend on buying more television sets, because I may now mount them on the wall without anything else, right? But then, what about the set-top box...well I don't think that there is enough storage space available in the world to actually store a persistent version of that topic, so that will have to wait for later.
 

Choose my own hardware when working at client site

Why is it that all businesses standardize on a workstation platform that is supposed to accommodate occasional needs for creating office documents and e-mail running on MS-Windows, often bundled with a 19"-inch monitor, insufficient amounts of RAM and a CPU that was at best mediocre two years ago. This is about as far as you can get from the specification of a decent development platform. In addition to that you usually have to go through the regular process of getting administrative rights, and to disable virus-control. You security people don't really get it, do you. Believe it or not, developers may need privileges to actually install applications on their workstation other than those approved and already installed by support. Why not trying to save some money, and let contractors and consultants use their own equipment instead, most possibly a laptop that they probably have already, but maybe also an external display as well. If networking is properly configured this should not be a problem neither from a maintenance nor a security perspective. And in order to avoid any potential envy or conflict, please provide your employees with the best possible equipment.

As for software, I am usually allowed to work with whatever tools that I want to as long as I don't expect my clients to provide them. My primary concern is hardware.

An Amazon Kindle or other e-book device

I am a regular Amazon customer, I buy mostly science and programming books, but recently I have also been buying my fair share of books on parenting, productivity, entrepreneurship and creative thinking. Books take up physical space and is heavy to carry around. More than once have I needed a book that I have bought without having it where and when I need it. I gudd this is partially caused by the ambulant nature of my work. With a decent e-book device I could possibly bring as many titled that I want in a package about the size of a regular book. Most titles would always be in stock and I would never-ever again be concerned again that the delivery service would deliver the package while I was away. I really need one of these things. The only little hitch about this device that made me quite worried may be found in this article. Words are not sufficient to describe the irony and hopelessness of such an act.

Seamless and effortless public transportation

If you do not live in Oslo or another provincial Nordic town, parts of this section may not apply to you. I have been using my car for work for years to go now. It is very convenient and has made it possible to cut down transportation-time to around 15 minutes each way. In addition to that, getting groceries or other things on the way home is the easiest of things. After getting my first child some time ago, me and my wife now share the car more and more, so I use the subway for work maybe twice a week. With good timing and no delays, I am able to get to work in around 45 minutes each way. This is from what I hear pretty decent, but still almost the triple of what I use today. I just don't have an extra hour a day to waste. I guess that without having to do a transfer, I could be down to around 20 minutes which is comparable to what I use in a car. Taking transfers out of the equation as long as both home and work is nearby a station for public transportation, or making transfers transparent will make this a competitive alternative for a much larger group of potential commuters.

The kind of system I had in mind consists of a network of autonomous small cubicles that may accommodate up to four passengers each. The backbone of the infrastructure is s grid of rails that may transfer a large set of these cubicles at high speeds and to their programmed destination. The grid may be powered by small electric motors or, preferably by magnetic leviation. A google search on "fremtidsrettet kollektivtransport" gave me 101 hits. When I get this few number of hits it is usually because I have mis-spelled something or that it doesn't exist. When it takes +7 years to get a non-working ticketing system for Ruter to go into production, i don't see this alternative being available anytime soon.

Being able to attribute the electrical consumption down to individual devices

In Norway, we are fortunate enough to cover most of our electrical needs from hydropower. From an emission perspective this is probably the cleanest, currently available source of energy that exists, but it cannot be exploited without significant consequences for the wildlife and environment that surrounds the power plant and any dams possibly built to provide for sufficient flow of water. The electrical consumption in Norwegian households have been increasing significantly and will continue to do so for the years to come. During periods with limited water supply, we are dependent upon supply from Denmark, that are more than willing to crank up their old coal-based power plants in Jutland to provide frozen Norwegians with stand-by power for their brand new LED tv's. Don't get me wrong, I am not a saint, I use my fair share of stand-by power. My point here is that most of our daily activities are assisted by some kind of device powered by electricity, and the electrical bill being a major part of the household budget, it is just fair that we should be able to have some more transparency utilization down to individual devices.

The power meter in my house has no means of even exposing the aggregated consumption of the household, it is one of those arcane, antiquated devices with a rotating disk. I guess that the likelihood of getting one of these equipped with some kind of interface that would enable me to offload some data is close to nothing. If I had one of the more recent meters I could do something like this but I don't and it will not provide me with all the information that I need.

If being able to attribute the power consumption down to individual devices, it would be much easier to convince people how to actually be more conscious on how they use their household devices and implicitly giving them the ability to understand how to reduce or improve their use. I think that getting this level of transparency is the key to get people to really understand how to spend the household-budget in a more environment friendly way. So are there any takers for developing this kind of infrastructure? I guess that the only thing it will take is for each device that consumes power to emit a signal containing an identifier of the device for every miliamp consumed.