Prompt's TechBlog
Ubiquitous technology leads to toilets 'crashing'
15 March 2006
Posted by Dave Wilby
There's an excellent article in The San Francisco Chronicle today, warning of the everyday perils we're likely to face when technology finally takes over every facet of our lives.
The article was spurred by a speech by tech author Adam Greenfield given at a Texan geekcon called South by Southwest Interactive. Greenfield is best known for his new book 'Everywhere' in which he discusses ubiquitous technology, such as 'smart toilets' and 'intelligent bandages. It's all either very scary or very cool, depending on your own personal geek quotient.
It's easy to be calm about a toilet or a bandage that keeps track of your health by analysing your escaping fluids, until you actually find the things in your own bathroom. I mean, what if they start crashing when you need them most, like every other piece of technology ever known to man ever, from the first fragile stone age wheels to the US space programme?
Some things are sacred, and shouldn't be fixed unless very, very broken indeed. For now, I draw my own personal techy line in the silicon just shy of my humble, common or garden Crapper.
The article was spurred by a speech by tech author Adam Greenfield given at a Texan geekcon called South by Southwest Interactive. Greenfield is best known for his new book 'Everywhere' in which he discusses ubiquitous technology, such as 'smart toilets' and 'intelligent bandages. It's all either very scary or very cool, depending on your own personal geek quotient.
It's easy to be calm about a toilet or a bandage that keeps track of your health by analysing your escaping fluids, until you actually find the things in your own bathroom. I mean, what if they start crashing when you need them most, like every other piece of technology ever known to man ever, from the first fragile stone age wheels to the US space programme?
Some things are sacred, and shouldn't be fixed unless very, very broken indeed. For now, I draw my own personal techy line in the silicon just shy of my humble, common or garden Crapper.
# posted by Dave Wilby at 5:22 PM 
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