I Tech, therefore I am

Gadgets- can they get better, soon?

I recently read an article about how gadgets (read technology) have changed our lives and

made everything easy. But the cynic in me doesn't completely agree. The dreamer in me dreams of the following to name a few:

I want to throw away my cell phone - can't my watch, a small sized watch do the same functions?

Wait, I know of bulky watches which also function as a PDA, mobile...etc but thats not what
I want. I want a completely voice-interfaced phone. So, if I have to make a phone call, I
just whisper to my watch 'Call John'. Ofcourse John's number was earlier stored in my phone
using voice again with a command whispered to it such as 'Store John Mathew five five
six.....two two'. How do I listen and speak to a person using the watch - I will lift my
wrist close to my ears and mouth. Don't I do this with my mobile in any case. I don't need a
blue tooth attachment to my watch, remember I'm talking about making life easier with
gadgets not chaining my whole body with gadgets. Every other PDA function can be
voice-commanded. The watch can have a small adapter, almost invisible, which I can plug in
to a computer once in a while to get reports, lists, schedules etc printed. I'm ofcourse
thinking of only the able persons and not about American Disabilities Act section 508.

Finger printing has been talked about as a pretty big thing in industry but the scale is
really small yet and if that does take off, I can just have my finger and get away with ID
card to my work place, the keys to my house, keys to my office. If I extend this fantasy,
some day maybe next century, there would be no passports, no logins, no bank account numbers to remember or jot down. The possibilities are stupendous. And I do know that someone can
cut my finger off and have everything that's mine but everything really has a risk. I can
book air tickets, draw a bank draft, sign an online cheque, pay bills ...all at the drop of
a hat,rather drop of a finger.

The laptop - the industry has toggled on and off the network enabled slim PC (rather dumb
terminal that just acts as an interface to all-knowing all-powerful remote server). The
laptop is a pain to carry, a pain to recharge and a pain to to be connected to Wi-Fi terminals esp. if a VPN network has to work through it and a whole big bunch of collaborative tools depending on it. For example while I'm on a meeting, sitting in an airport (aha- isn't this the ideal usecase for a collaborative tool), drawing my plan on a net meeting like white board, I suddenly find that my wi-fi connection got disconnected for 0.5 seconds. A tier-1 user who uses the internet network will not observe this since the network immediately reconnects in a transparent fashion. But see, I'm a heavy tier-2 or tier-3 user. My VPN firewall, very secutiy conscious goes off with the smallest change in network, and my whole lot of Workplace tools (my drawing on the white board, my messages, my control of another's desktop is all gone with the wind! I have to negotiate my VPN again, reconnect to the meeting and do everything again. Now tell me, this is not a remote possibility, or is it?

Most ads for networks, tools, grid or utility computing, storage management, journaling of lost work,backup, disaster recovery etc make it look very simple on TV and magazines. They really are not.

The list can go on...I will stop here. Thanks for reading.