PTV: A FUTURE-STATE STORY

teen girl
It’s 2015. Thirteen-year-old Kari Ross just got a PTV for her birthday, the much-anticipated PC/TV convergence product. PTV comes with the following hardware and software:

  • a stereo headset with a built-in microphone
  • a flip-up 3D screen that clips onto her glasses
  • a wireless trackpad that clips onto her belt
  • a wireless webcam with a velcro wrist strap
  • voice recognition software that ‘learns’ Kari’s pronunciation and vocabulary
  • a folding wireless keyboard that fits in her backpack
  • wi-fi internet access
  • VoIP worldwide long-distance telephony
  • subscriptions to her favourite television programs
  • a vast library of downloadable PPV movies and free music and books (including all her schoolbooks)
  • a pocket-sized CPU/hard drive
  • MC2, an integrated personal content management, annotation, social networking and publishing package

First thing in the morning, Kari’s already videoconferencing with friends while she gets ready for school, debating with them what she should wear. She also has an IM window open and is dictating replies to several messages and e-mails in her inbox. Her first two school time-blocks are independent study, so she downloads the study materials and completes the exercises and self-tests. Third time-block is a group project on solar energy, so she walks over to friend Sarah’s house, five minutes away, where the group has agreed to meet for the parts of the project that can’t be done by video. Their project advisor checks in by video and counsels them where to look for some of the data they’ll need. Kari stays at Sarah’s for lunch, and they chat and swap files, with each other and with friends they each have online.

After lunch Kari starts working on her co-op project — she’s learning to custom-make clothes, using a cutting and sewing machine that is operated by her computer, one of a variety of programmable machines that her community centre, and even the local Starbucks, make available to their members and customers. This particular machine adjusts the pattern to the appropriate size, cuts and sews the material, and adds embroidery. She needs some material for this, so she uses her GPS and personal scheduling software to identify how to get it quickest. It turns out that Chris is just across the street from the fabric store, and he is scheduled to meet with girlfriend Sarah at her house in an hour. She programs her scheduler accordingly and immediately gets a request from Sarah’s scheduler to bring over two folding chairs when she comes. She confirms the request and Sarah, getting the message, IM’s a ‘thank you’. She then places the order with the fabric store, pays for it, and notifies the store that Chris is authorized to pick it up for her, all online. She has a videoconference with the president of Dionysis Designs, her co-op project sponsor. They talk about how an entrepreneurial business like Dionysis is set up, and some of the challenges the business has faced. Kari has already sold some of her own custom-made clothes, and some of her own embroidery designs, through her personal website.

MC2, which stands for Managing Content & Communications, is the only software package Kari ever learned to use. It has three ‘modes’, represented by a pencil cursor (for document/message writing and annotation), a hand cursor (for saving, sending, publishing and otherwise moving content from one place to another), and a telephone cursor (for connecting with other people and their content). She laughs in disbelief when her father tells her he had to use 26 different, and incompatible, software programs to do the things she does with MC2, which a friend taught her to use in 15 minutes.

She dictates some information about the Gore-Tex jeans she made that afternoon (convertible into shorts, and with the scanned and computer-embroidered likeness of the owner on one ‘cheek’ and that of the owner’s sweetheart or friend on the other). She takes a photo of the jeans with her webcam and uses MC2 to move the article and the photo to her personal website — today’s ‘blog post’ done (though Kari has never heard it called a blog — it’s just Kari’s ‘public’ space). She also moves the pattern and specs for the jeans to her ‘shareable files’ folder (along with the demo tracks from Chris’ band), and sends copies of the post and the file to her ‘clothing designs’ mail group (which, she notes proudly, has been subscribed to by over 1000 people around the world).

Kari calls her generation ‘Nomads’. To them, she says, home is just a place to sleep. There is no need to be in any particular place to do anything, and some of her friends are in her house (it has a nice-sized meeting/party room) more than she is. She can’t remember the last time she actually sat in a classroom, and is astonished that some ‘older’ people still drive to personal ‘offices’ — what for? Ironically, some of her best friends, and those with whom she spends the most time, she has never met face-to-face. But she rarely needs either a car ride or to take public transit — her ‘face-to-face’ friends are within easy walking distance, as is the community centre, the doctor, the great organic vegetarian restaurant, Starbucks and the fitness centre. And who would go to a movie theatre with such a limited selection and no 3D vision? Anything you need to buy can be either downloaded, file-shared or ordered online and delivered to your door. And when you actually have to go to a store, your webcam lets others look over your shoulder and get you to pick up what they need.

Evening comes, and Kari settles down with Chris (“we’re just friends”) and Sarah, and side by side on their PTVs they watch six hours of a much-discussed new comedy series, pausing for breaks, to chat with each other and with online friends, and for a one-hour workout. “Let me get this straight — back in the ’90s you had to wait a week to see each new episode, watch commercials, and if it wasn’t on at a convenient time, you had to record it on tape?” (wild rolling of eyes)

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9 Responses to PTV: A FUTURE-STATE STORY

  1. Dave: quite interesting you story, but i would like to share a personal experience.. when i sitll work as a Business consultant for the “old eterprises” we were working in an ecommerce portal for a retail store, it didnt have the impact we supouse it was going to have reasons many of them (in Mexico the Internet is n ot as popular like in other places, the people who stays who buy this stuffs dont know hot to use Internet) but the most fascinating answer we found it was that: people didnt use this system becuse going out to the reatil stores it was a kind of distraction fot them and it was like a meeting point to see their friends, chating, etc… obviously we realize that the target we were trying to atack it wasnt young people but we hesitata about if some day we would stay at home avoiding go out to work, buy things etc….Obviosly the idiosyncracy of each contry affects all this and the resistance to change, but Would be this some day possible???I would like to heard your experience.patadeperro@lycos.com

  2. hetty says:

    I like the efficiency but I think it’s unhealthy to have so many friends you’ve never met face to face and how would she have met her current friends? In some ways it seems like it would make us all even MORE individualistic, never having to interact with people face to face if we didn’t want to. And that’s a LOT of time in front of a screen: six hour TV shows and the computer for things that used to be hand crafts, that teach skills you wouldn’t get from a computer and may not be as satisfying.But three cheers for visioning! It’s so important that we can look to the future and discuss possibilities!

  3. Raging Bee says:

    Speaking of friends she’s never met, how about the possibility that someone – such as a police-intelligence agency or totalitarian church – might create fake on-line personalities to deceive or spy on others?

  4. Kevin says:

    Interesting. technology-wise, I think this could be viable, with the exception of a single MC2 software (unless it’s from Microsoft of course). But I guess you did not say that there was only one company making the software… you just said it’s the only one she has ever learned. It seems that if the software has the same functionality of 28 of our current softwares, it is not so much a single software, but rather an interface to 28 other smaller packages created by independent developers, but using an open standard. There will always be people adding new cool independently built functionality for it.Such a wonderful software wouldn’t happen over night, and I think that by the time she is 13, she will have been learning it all her life, growing along with the software. I wonder if there is a need for a friend to actually teach it to her as you mention….I think an answer to Miguel might also have to do with the fact that she is a child who grew up in such an environment. I doubt that her father is using the software in the same way as she does, and he probably still sticks to his old-world habits, such as going to the store himself sometimes.The education system you mention is interesting. Although I don’t have kids myself, and no immediate plans yet, my girlfriend and I talked about home-schooling. My idea is that it would be very much Internet oriented of course, and the social interaction she can get on the web, supplemented with some off-line activities with real flesh and blood kids would be much more valuable than my own experiences where I was basically forced to either be a loner, or choose from a small group of fiends who didn’t offer much diversity. An education like you mention would be great I think.I can’t imagine however, that it will be the norm. Fifteen years is not very long to break down the classroom education system that we all know and love. Even if a large number of parents decided to stop dropping their kids off at school to be baby-sat while they go to the office, there is going to be an even larger number of parents who wont be able to afford all the gadgetry Kari is using. Maybe in fifteen years those kids will have a laptop computer for each kid in the classroom, but they will still be going to the classroom.

  5. Rob Paterson says:

    Hi Dave Ray Kurzweill subscribes to the view that humans will embed technology into themselves and that in time, we may become a complex being both flesh, spirit and machine. He thinks that there will be two trends – entertainment and communication such as you describe and also enhancement. By enhancements he means add ons that help repair damage and problems. We see Cochlear implants now that enable the deaf to hear.Both tracks are powerful. If you had a child who was deaf would you hold back? If you could access your communications device by a head movement would you? I think soCheck out the Age of Spiritual Machines

  6. Dave Pollard says:

    Miguel: I appreciate that going shopping has become (at least in N.America) a ‘social’ experience, but for many young people that’s because they’re chased away from any other place they congregate, so the mall is the only place they’re welcomed. I think we’ll learn that it’s kind of a disease — we want things and buy things to fill a spiritual void and because we’re conditioned to do so. As we (re-)learn other avenues for social participation and collaboration that are not commercial, I think most will give up the shopping ‘habit’ gladly.Hetty: I’d like to think that the friendships I’ve made online with people (like Rob Paterson who comments above), only a few of whom I’ve met face-to-face, are as close, if not closer, than most of the friendships I’ve made in person. I don’t think the mere absence of physical presence necessarily makes you lonely — my story was meant to show that Kari is constantly in the companionship, physically or virtually, of many people. We all make friends through communities, and neighbourhood, shared-activity, and school-group communities are certainly sources for this, but so are virtual communities.Raging Pony-Tailed One: With the addition of voice and video connectivity, it will become *much* more difficult for narcs, perverts and wacko groups to masquerade as peers. And I think vulnerability to the wacko groups is often a result of loneliness. The networking capability I describe will make it easier to find like minded individuals and friends, and less likely to be prey for such groups.Kevin: You are right that cost constraint is the critical issue, and it’s due mainly to the outrageous overpricing of these technologies because there is insufficient competition in the market. If that Achilles’ heel of the vision can be solved, though, I think the education system will react very quickly. I was part of such a program a generation ago, and the students in that program, who never attended a class in their last yearof high-school, and simply helped each other out in each subject, went in many cases from average students to scholarship winners in one year (my average jumped from 67% to 92%). On your other point, I remember when we wrote computer programs in ‘compiler’ (machine language) on punched cards, until someone got the idea of meta-languages. MC2 is a meta-software application that incorporates all the functionality of these applications, but uses a very simple and intuitive user interface — no menus, just doing virtually with the cursor what you’d do physically with your hand, your pencil, and your video-telephone. Kari’s generation may be the transitional one, where she learns to do things the old ‘hard’ way and the new intuitive way, depending on how long that transition period is. But I do, absolutely see MC2 being developed as an open source app.

  7. Don Dwiggins says:

    I like the use of stories to probe possible futures. Gary Alexander does that to good effect in “eGaia” (which I’ve referred you to), and also in a paper called “Online Tools for a Sustainable CollaborativeEconomy” (http://sustainability.open.ac.uk/gary/pdf/onlinetools.pdf). I think you’d find him a good guy to dialogue with.

  8. Dave Pollard says:

    Don: Thanks — I’m reading eGaia now.

  9. Raging Bee says:

    Dave: you wrote; “With the addition of voice and video connectivity, it will become *much* more difficult for narcs, perverts and wacko groups to masquerade as peers. … The networking capability I describe will make it easier to find like minded individuals and friends, and less likely to be prey for such groups.”Both of your points are true – but the desire of some people and institutions, especially spy agencies, law-enforcement, authoritarian churches and cults, could easily fuel a technological race to beat any security, countermeasures, or alternatives that mere individuals like Kari could devise or pay for. Could Kari muster the resources to stay ahead of such totalitarians? That’s not at all certain.Also, advances in artificial intelligence will make it easier for a spy-agency’s computers to pose as people. Furthermore, actual people could easily assist in the masquerading process for targets of special interest.Since you’re so keen on telling stories, let me recommend “Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson, and just about anything by William Gibson. That should give you a pretty good idea of where this sort of tech-assisted interaction can go.

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