I’m in a training class all week for work, and today we were talking about the advances in IP technology. It was mentioned that eventually “they” want to assign IP address to almost everything in your house and making your appliances “smart”. Now I’m not techo-phobic or anything, I work with new technologies everyday in my job, but this kinda has me worried. Does anyone think it’s REALLY a good idea to have IP addresses for the stove, microwave, VCR, etc? It’s bad enough I have to put up with my GF nagging me about stuff to do around the house, now I can look forward to getting phone calls at work from my fridge to bitch at me cuz we’re out of milk. I can only imagine that whoever knows the IP address to my TV and VCR will know when I’m watching a porn movie (not that I do this regularly, you understand, but just in case I ever wanted to check one out). When I open my underwear drawer in the morning to get dressed and see that there’s only one clean pair left, I know it’s time to do laundry, I don’t need my washer to tell me this.
I have heard the voice of the future, and it sounds like my mother. shudder
I just thought of something - what if the technology advances to the point that all the appliances are given AI?
Stove - "I smell in here from when that frozen pizza was burnt. I told you it was done, but did you listen? Nooooooo . . . "
TV - “Don’t be such a crybaby, oven. At least he gets fast food from time to time. He leaves me on constantly. I’m getting so tired.”
Vaccuum Cleaner - “Well at least he pays attention to you. I haven’t seen the outside of the closet for months! How does the carpet look? I know it must need me.”
Nah, it ain’t gonna happen that way, though it could, seeing as with IPv6 there will be enough addresses. More likely, we’ll see a convergeance of voice, data, and video technology as bandwidth and address space increase.
The MOST important thing is that everything remains distributed, so the massive media companies that put out such awful tripe like “Boy Meets World” and “The Babysitters Club” will not have a stranglehold on new media.