Users won’t stand for being confused or frustrated or for having their time wasted. The highway’s software platform will have to make it almost infallibly easy to find information, even if users don’t know what they’re looking for. There will be lots of information.
No matter what form the PC takes, users will still have to be able to navigate their way through its applications. Think of the way you use your television remote control today to choose what you want to watch. Future systems with more choices will have to do better … You won’t necessarily have to point to make your point. Eventually, we’ll also be able to speak to our televisions, personal computers, or other information appliances. At first we’ll have to keep a limited vocabulary, but eventually our exchanges will become quite conversational.
You’ll … have access to the highway by using kiosks – some free, some requiring payment of a fee – which will be found in office buildings, shopping malls, and airports in much the same spirit as drinking fountains, rest rooms, and pay phones. In fact they will replace not only pay phones but also banking machines, because they will offer their capabilities as well as all the other highway applications, from sending and receiving messages to scanning maps and buying tickets. Access to kiosks will be essential, and available everywhere.
Wallet PCs will be priced about the way cameras are today. Simple, single-purpose “smart cards” for digital currency will cost about what a disposable camera does now, whereas, like an elaborate camera, a really sophisticated wallet PC might cost $1,000 or more, but it will outperform the most exotic computer of just a decade ago. Smart cards, the most basic form of the wallet PC look just like credit cards and are popular now in Europe. Their microprocessors are embedded within the plastic. The smart card of the future will identify its owner and store digital money, tickets, and medical information. It won’t have a screen, audio capabilities, or any of the more elaborate options of the more expensive wallet PCs.
Some wallet PCs will be simple and elegant and offer only the essentials, such as a small screen, a microphone, a secure way to transact business with digital money, and the capability to read or otherwise use basic information. Others will bristle with all kinds of gadgets, including cameras, scanners that will be able to read printed text or handwriting, and receivers with the global-positioning capability. Most will have a panic button for you to press if you need emergency help. Some models will include thermometers, barometers, altimeters, and heart-rate sensors.
The wallet PC will connect you to the information highway while you travel a real highway, and tell you were you are. Its built-in speaker will be able to dictate directions to let you know that a freeway exit is coming up or suggest an alternate route. The wallet PC’s color maps will overlay your location with whatever kinds of information you desire – road and weather conditions, campgrounds, scenic spots, even fast-food outlets … Off the roads, on a hike in the woods, it will be your compass and as useful as your Swiss Army knife.
Individual biometric measurements are more secure and almost certainly will be included eventually in some wallet PCs. A biometric security system records a physical trait, such as a voiceprint or a fingerprint. For example, your wallet might demand that you speak aloud a random word that flashes on its screen or that you press your thumb against the side of the device whenever you are about to conduct a transaction with significant financial implications. The wallet will compare what it “heard” or “felt” with its digital record of your voice – or thumbprint.
When wallet PCs are ubiquitous, we can eliminate the bottlenecks that now plague airport terminals, theaters, and other locations where people queue to show identification or a ticket. As you pass through an airport gate, for example, your wallet PC will connect to the airport computers and verify that you have paid for a ticket. You won’t need a key or magnetic card key to get through doors either. Your wall PC will identify you to the computer controlling the door.
Tomorrow the wallet PC will make it easy for anyone to spend and accept digital funds. Your wallet will link into a store’s computer to allow money to be transferred without any physical exchange at a cash register. If your son needs money, you might digitally slop five bucks from your PC wallet to his.
The digital revolution is whipping through our lives like a Bengali typhoon … the computer “press” is too busy churning out the latest PCInfoComputingCorporateWorld iteration of its ad sales formula cum parts catalog to discuss the meaning or context of social changes so profound their only parallel is probably the discovery of fire.