The future of automation
Home automation is becoming quite a popular topic these days, especially after Google’s recent buyout of the Nest smart thermostat. Countless home automation devices were demoed at CES this year. Even AT&T is getting in on the action with a new service in select markets that allows subscribers to control most functions of their home from their mobile devices.
So what does the future of home automation look like? Or for that matter, automation outside the home? I’ve got some ideas of gadgets that we might see in the not-so-distant future that could improve the quality of our lives exponentially.
Volume Control
The first device I imagine in the future of home automation is a system for situations in which your TV or stereo is too loud. It would be especially useful in apartments, where neighbors above, below, or beside you can be more easily disturbed by the loud noise.
When a neighbor shows up at your door and kindly asks you to turn down the volume, the system automatically hears their request and responds by intelligently cranking the volume to maximum and blasting the song “Turn Down For What.” Such a system can greatly simplify the process of telling your neighbor that you don’t really care.
Autopilot
An intelligent driving assistant that can quickly and efficiently respond to changing traffic conditions on-the-fly, and would be included standard in every car.
In the event that you are cut off by an inconsiderate driver, the system would detect the sudden movement of the vehicle ahead of you, calculate the distance between it and your own car, and automatically select the appropriate number of LED-backlit middle fingers, profanities, and horn blasts to signal to the oncoming driver that they are a massive idiot who shouldn’t even be allowed to drive. Optionally, a quick scan of the offender’s license plate would allow the system to generate culturally-relevant insults based on the driver’s home state.
Climate Change
The Nest thermostat is a pretty decent device by 2013 standards, but the future demands more. Or, to be more accurate, the future demands less.
The future of home climate automation uses a series of sophisticated, Internet-connected sensors to monitor the size of the polar icecaps and determine the number of baby polar bears you have personally murdered by wasting electricity. You are a horrible person and should be ashamed of your wasteful energy usage. Turn your thermostat off. Now.
Thank You for Flying Automated Airlines
Going through airport security is a hassle, and many people today don’t trust the TSA. Soon, that won’t be an issue. The TSA will be rendered obsolete by automated security devices.
In keeping with current security practices, these devices will use a complex algorithm to select passengers at random and humiliate them publicly by projecting their Facebook and Instagram photos onto a wall for others to see.
The framework for such a system is already in place thanks to the NSA’s PRISM efforts. This much more efficient method of airport humiliation will potentially save billions of taxpayer dollars every year while maintaining the Transportation Security Administration’s sterling record of zero foiled terrorist plots.
Revisionist History
The future of automation may seem impressive, but let’s not ignore the past. Soon machines will handle day-to-day tasks in the past with a greater level of efficiency than was previously possible (unless the period of time you refer to as “previously” includes the machine-altered timeline, in which case the efficiency our machines are able to achieve in the past will be equal to the level of efficiency currently enjoyed by our historical counterparts, unless a grandfather paradox ensues, thus negating the entire current timeline and eliminating the machines that altered the past, thus allowing our current timeline to once again exist, which then restarts the cycle once again in an infinite loop that none of us can remember or even know is happening).
Once time travel has been invented (spoiler: it already has in the future, just not in the present, so technically it hasn’t yet, but it already will have been), machines will be able to travel back to the past and assassinate human rebel leaders such as John Connor. This, of course, will result in a grandfather paradox and a time loop, as discussed above. But who cares? We’ll all be dead.
Automated exinction. It’s the future of the past.