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Ideas Unlimited: 11 Suggestions for New Inventions
securitas writes "The New York Times asked 11 prominent people to write about a device that they'd like to see invented (Google). Contributors include John Perry Barlow, Scott Adams, William Gibson and Bill Joy, among others. There are some intriguing ideas and some that are way out there, but lots of fun for geeks everywhere."
JOHN PERRY BARLOW ~ Dump the Doodads, and Retrofit the Brain
"I want a gizmo to liberate me from gizmos. I keep thinking about the Aborigines, who decided very early on, like 50,000 years ago, that they had five tools and that was all they needed and they didn't develop any more. I've reached the point where I believe that gadgets are self-replicating to the point where my whole life is a sea of gimcrackery and doodads. I want to connect with people without feeling constantly oppressed by all of the beeping and buzzing and whining. I find myself toting two cellphones and a P.D.A. and a laptop and a Swiss Army knife. I feel completely overwhelmed by all of my tools, and even with all of these tools I find I am unable to make the kinds of connections I want at the times that I want. I look at 19th-century novels and it seems people were in better touch then than they are now. It seems as if every time someone in Dickens wants to reach someone, they are able to right away. Of course, they had 15-year-old boys they could dispatch to go find someone. I suppose I'm still waiting for the brain implant. Presumably that would be an ultimate interface between your nervous system and the larger accretive nervous system that you could switch on or off in different ways that would be constantly reconfigurable so that you wouldn't have to upgrade it by buying a new one every six months. But I don't think that's a very likely possibility. I've watched the efforts to develop a universal remote control, and they haven't been very promising so far."
John Perry Barlow is the Co-founder and vice chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation; former lyricist for the Grateful Dead
MARGARET CHO ~ Laptop, Butler and Virtual Mom
"I wish there was a laptop computer that would stay at body temperature, and not heat up to the point of your needing a phone book in between the computer and your lap. It should be extremely thin and easy to carry in one hand, yet with a large enough screen to make watching films very close to like being in a theater, with a surround-sound system loud enough to fill an entire room. The computer should be powered by solar energy, which could be from any source, not only the sun, so that even the illumination of the screen could keep it going. There would never be any reason to turn it off, because it would always be on. It would also be online all the time, no matter where you are, with a speed-of-light connection, loading pages instantaneously but killing pop-ups before they have a chance to blur your vision. This nifty gadget would be able to find a signal in Antarctica and could double as a cellular phone, a two-way pager, a fax, a stereo and a television. The memory would be astounding, and there would be room to store thousands of films and reruns of television shows as well as every piece of music ever made. The computer should also have a mood reader, like those rings from the 70's, where it would change color according to the state of mind of the wearer: the computer would immediately start to play a film that would snap you out of a bad mood or a piece of music to pull you out of any depression. The machine would be more than just a laptop, but a very good and intuitive friend, dispensing good advice when needed, shutting itself down when it felt that you were overworking yourself, ordering food when you have worked so hard that you forgot to eat and are getting a headache. This laptop would be extremely affordable as well as indestructible, and every time a new model came out, the computer would automatically update itself so that you would have every new feature as soon as it was invented. It would be a computer that not only served your needs but would anticipate your needs, as well as accomplish those things that we forget to do for ourselves that really are well deserved, like nice hot dinners and back rubs. It would also record television shows that it thought would be interesting for you to see, as well as pre-download music you might like and movies that you are not to live ano