Big Brother is always watching but I think 1984 was a bit optimistic and it’s now happened but not in the Edward Snowden way. It used to be you could maintain your privacy by keeping the curtains closed but Orwell never anticipated the home game of us actually inviting it into the house with Google Now always listening and the Xbox One always watching. Siri knows where I am without tracking down my friends and Google Plus and iCloud have all of my info.
With technology on the advance, I don’t think there’s ever a chance of have a de-vance (or is it non-vance?) and even less chance of my ever being alone, which actually could help with the depression around the holidays.
In the best of scenarios, the future should go something like this: I wake and my iPhone knows I’m waking so raises the temperature and turns on the coffee maker. As I leave the bedroom and walk down the hallway, the bedroom lights go off and lights turn on to illuminate the way. As I walk into the bathroom, the toilet seat heats up and the shower turns on.
When I get out of the shower, my phone alerts me that it’s snowing outside and lets me know that I have to leave early to stay ahead of traffic; it also alerts all of the people who work for me to allow for extra time. As I walk down the stairs, it syncs all of my news stories, podcasts, and music to my car as it raises the garage door and turns on the car seat warmer.
As I drive, it guides me towards work in the most efficient way, helping me to avoid backups and accidents. When I arrive to work, my phone directs me to the nearest parking space and then my car self parks. My phone alerts me to the meetings of the day and populates the appropriate notes on my iPad. As I put my phone on my desk, my desk lights up with the schedule for the day as it syncs with my phone, my iPad, and iCloud.
As I get up from my desk, it checks my blood sugar and lets me know, since I didn’t have breakfast, that I need to eat something. On the way to my meeting, it guides me past the vending machine and automatically dispenses an energy bar and an herbal tea with honey (just the way I like it) while deducting the amount from my debit card.
When I arrive home at night, my phone syncs with my house, turning on the lights and downloading podcasts, while turning on the television and queuing my shows.
But I see it going more like this: I wake with Siri screaming that the snooze button is for wimps and I should wake up the first time the alarm goes off. The nightstand light has been on since I rolled over at 3am and my phone thought I was awake.
As I get up and walk across the floor, the bedroom light turns itself off before I’m out of the room startling me and I trip into a dark hallway turning the coffee maker on thus heating up hot water as I forgot to put coffee in the night before.
As I walk past the bathroom, the shower turns on spraying water onto the bathroom floor as I left the shower curtain open. I run downstairs to get my clothes out of the dryer and the garage door opens and the car starts. My phone alerts me to remember my sunglasses and not to bring an umbrella because, for some reason, it's still on last week's schedule when I was in sunny Los Angeles.
I leave the house a few minutes late because I was mopping up water on the floor and I was on the phone with tech support and was asked "what were you syncing?" to which I responded "exactly" and I have a feeling that the more technology I have, the more time I'm going to spend on the phone with tech support.
When I'm late for my meeting because all of my devices decide to upgrade at the same time preventing me from using them, I pass the candy machine which dispenses tea and an energy bar to the guy in front of me yet charging my account. But it doesn't stop there.
When I go to the doctor, he weighs me and asks if I've been eating sweets. I'll of course say "no" and he'll ask to see my iPhone which has all of the synced info from my connected iWatch that is always on my wrist and has all of my medical info as it checks my blood sugar seventeen times a day through sub-dermal sensors mounted on the back of the watch.
On the drive home, I’ll take a spontaneous detour as I want my Grande Soy Chai and my car tells me to ‘make a u-turn at the next street.’ When I don’t, it disables the steering wheel and makes a u-turn to get me back on course. I, of course, can’t remember the term to disable the steering and try ‘abort,’ ‘cut the shit,’ and ‘I’m going to rip out your electronic brain and poop in the empty space.’ When I pull into my driveway, my phone will attempt to sync with my house and, of course, fail, and I'll think to myself, what was I syncing?
