Way to future
Of late I have been yearning to become a techie, trying out and reviewing new gadgets, staying at the forefront of technology. This is more because of my inner conviction of being able to identify which new developments will click and which are just namesake additions. This attraction towards technology is in spite of spending four years in engineering (precisely electronics) and feeling lost. But that feeling has lot to blame on the course structuring. The faculty did an unbelievable and unparalleled job in making it drab and incomprehensible.

Let me take you through a sneak preview of your home fifty years down the line. All electronic gadgetry will be integrated and master controlled. For convenience let us call your master system as fido. Fido be accessible at a couple of places in the house. Accessibility will be through a projected screen which will be touch sensitive. (Imagine a transparent screen with icons)

Mobile phone will become obsolete atleast inside the house and will stay confined to your car and exterior locations. From anywhere inside your house, you can use it by just calling it out. Also the microphones will be hidden in the walls and the listener on the other end will hear your voice as good as if he is in your room. There will be voice recognition, thus allowing only calls from you and not anyone in your house, unless you give them a code to access it.

Movies and music can also be played by calling out the appropriate codes. Vast collections of movies can be saved in a small drive without any fuss which will reflect both the efficient compressing algorithms and huge memory capacities that will prevail then.

In your wardrobe, the clothes you throw on the bottom will automatically be channeled to the washing machine which will be invisible to the dwellers. The washed clothes will be dried, ironed and even your deodorant (permanent smell) will be added to it and placed neatly back in your wardrobe.

From the projected screen you will be able to access the inventory in your refrigerator. If you feel you have run out of something, you can just call out an order to Fido. It will place order with the grocer and the grocer will deliver it instantly. There will be a small box outside your house. Fido will pick this up from there and place it in the refrigerator. You will be billed in the end of the month for this.

The airconditioning system will work based on your presence. Thermal detectors will sense your position and the vent near that vicinity will work. The same principle will also be applicable to the lights. There will be face recognition at the door and depending on who turns up at the door, Fido will tell you of that person's arrival in the room in which you are present. If it is someone new, it will try describing you the person.

You will be able to change the color of your walls and also your car through simple commands. Your car will drive automatically. The traffic will be syncronized by a big server (Fido senior) run by the state. When you get into your car and announce your destination, it will send a request to the fido senior. It will obtain the route from fido senior. There will be no traffic signals anywhere and regulation will be done by modifying speed suitably so as to keep moving continuously and not wait anywhere.

I guess this preview is enough. Too much of it and it spoils the surprise for you. In a nutshell, people will become so dumb and lazy and if anything goes wrong with fido, you will go mad. Also it will take a whole group of technicians to get it right.