WORDWAR

The Everyday World

The Shape of Things to Come

"Ceramic-home living certainly makes life a lot easier than when your dad and I moved into our first home," said Ms. Nanton to her daughter. "Who would have thought that a house could be smarter and have a better memory than your father!"
Farfetched? Such comments may not be unusual as we enter the third millennium. Homes guaranteed for more than twenty years, with no fire insurance (because they are made of silicon and limestone) and carrying a lower mortgage rate (because the financial lending institution can't lose) will be common. These homes will automatically equalize humidity levels with the outside air when you take a shower. They will turn up the heat an hour before a cold wave hits your district. Such homes will still have the refrigerator in the kitchen but the motor for that fridge (and that irritating buzzing sound) will be in the garage, where the heat it produces will keep your car from freezing.
Of course the house will adjust each room as you enter for your thermal comfort level. Personal identity sensors will adjust to you, your partner, or the kids, depending on who is in the room. If everyone appears simultaneously, it will average or follow any specific pre-programmed command for such occasions. And the house automatically turns on your personal computer/robot education/information/entertainment holographic image projector in what will quickly grow to be the favorite room in the house. This is the residence of the knowledge navigator, your at-home-learning computer directed by an Apple-developed system that "understands" how you think.
A project known as America, Part II will have a dramatic effect on our way of life and the way we perceive learning. The philosophy behind it says: if we can throw a switch for electricity and turn a tap for water, why can't we just hit a button for knowledge? A substantial portion of time previously spent watching TV entertainment will be converted into a learning process by building a high "interest factor" into shows, as is done now for commercials, sitcoms, and the evening news. Learning will become increasingly visual as it becomes obvious that static book knowledge cannot compete with dynamic visual information. Many people will have difficulty accepting this change: old habits are not automatically eradicated when the rules of life change suddenly.
New forms of visual entertainment on a grand scale will appear. Large enclosed stadiums and convention centers will offer high-definition images on huge flat/curved screens, giving the impression that viewers are physically involved in the performance. (The beginnings of such developments are already evident in places like the SkyDome in Toronto, with its Jumbotron scoreboard.) Massive productions will be created at unbelievable cost for the one live production, recorded holographically. Such shows will be relayed via satellite, or more likely fiber-optic cables, to world centers for presentation in large arenas to huge audiences willing to pay $100 or more per viewing. "Nostalgia" theaters will continue to be supported by the older, more conventional segment of society, just as they are today. They will be accepted as the visual museums of yesterday.
Obviously, those who live in smart houses won't put up with dumb cars. Many homes will have built-in natural gas and electric recharging units for "smart cars." Before the end of the twentieth century most cars will have microwave ovens next to the glove compartment. New "Heat & Eat" packaged foods will be sold at natural gas/electric recharging service stations. Most will carry the Campbell's Soup label as Campbell's research, under way since 1988, will give the company an "out front" image. Such cars will also contain sensors that keep us just twenty-five feet behind the car ahead. From other sensors farther along on the highway, the car will "know" of obstacles or slowing traffic that will require gradual braking. Such sensors will standardize traffic flow, permitting a 50 percent increase in the number of cars on the road with fewer traffic jams than today. Dashboard-projected video (DPV) will allow the driver to read all speed and other instruments without taking his or her eyes off the road.
Permanently installed low-cost phones will serve as a back-up to your personal, wrist-implanted phone. This will be the fourth generation of the compact cordless phone introduced in Britain in 1989. Even then it weighed only four ounces. It fits into your shirt or blouse pocket and costs only one-tenth the price of a cellular phone with just one-quarter the operating costs. Motorola is now manufacturing its Silverlink 2000 phone at the rate of 5,000 a week in Malaysia and selling it at the rate of 1,000 a week in Hong Kong and Singapore alone. Computer, fax, and satellite-delivered navigation signals will all be standard in any car built after 2001.
It is possible that future cars will run on air. One U.S. institute, Solar Energy Research of Golden, Colorado, is working on a process to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) into methanol for use in cars. Other companies, like Delco Electronics, are working on "self-driving cars" that would incorporate such features as obstacle detection, collision-avoidance, and radar-controlled steering.
Clothing will become even more diversified than during the 1980s and 1990s. Dress fabric interwoven with fiber-optic cables will light up or glow. A person's phone number might be included in a fabric's weft and warp so that it could be flashed to a desired partner yet remain barely visible to others in a crowd. Fabric that would appear loose and free-flowing could become tight and clinging upon command. This will be accomplished through a technique known as molecular shrinking in which an electrical current minimizes the area between molecules. The procedure is already used in some forms of metallic adjustable springs. Clothing designers will incorporate this and other advanced technologies into previously static fabric.
Life in the "crystal lane" (it will make the Industrial Age "fast lane" look like geriatric alley) will result in a rapid growth in monastic orders, based on the same tenets that caused them to dominate so much of Europe during the Middle Ages. Some people, feeling that the new age has too much change for them, will seek sanctuary from change in such temples of tranquillity. As in the Middle Ages, more men than women will follow that path. Women are more adaptable than men, and this will show up in their increased influence and affluence.
Research indicates that a sizable percentage of the population finds that receptivity to new types of foods and cooking processes increases adaptability to change. The world interchange of various ethnic groups, new cooking methods, and amazing new "crops" produced by biotechnology will accelerate this change. A food "explosion" during the late 1990s will appear even more astounding than the consumer electronics explosion of the 1980s. Most of these foods, as yet unknown because they haven't been invented (just as jet planes, television, computers, and satellites were not invented or even dreamed of in the early days of the Industrial Revolution), will be created by the new science of biotechnology. No doubt, some country will come out with "new people" as well.
This science will be so controversial during the years ahead that it will put the abortion issue on the rear burner. In 1989 the U.S. government approved genetic manipulation research on humans. Both the approval and the potential restrictions on it will have vast consequences for those countries that approve or disapprove of such practices. Biotechnology will basically mean the redesigning of the human body. Already, perhaps irretrievable steps have been taken that will result in our designing our own successors. Those who fight the process stand to lose incredible benefits. Those who support the process could unleash potentially hideous results. It will be the test of human intelligence to find a middle path.
By the year 2010 the planet will be "alive." The billions of human brain cells in each of us, connected via computer and fiber-optic cable, will be exchanging information at femtosecond speeds around the globe and at relatively inexpensive rates. This will accentuate the feeling of interconnectedness among all planetary dwellers. Some people, through such close electronic contact, will develop a sense of intimacy that could equate to a form of mental telepathy. Some younger children already report such feelings.
Photonics, the new science of acquiring, storing, and disseminating all types of media via light instead of electricity, will find a wide range of applications. It will make past advances, such as those in transportation, where we moved from covered wagons to jet planes, seem leisurely.
You can dread the future, or relish its challenges. The Chinese character for "chaos" also reads as "opportunity." The Chinese saying on luck and disaster presents another double meaning useful in describing the future: We live in interesting times.

Home Electronics

Almost everyone now has a VCR, but most people have never learned how to program it to record the desired shows. The new units make this much easier and can be programmed on screen. The latest models incorporate a "translator." They record shows simulcast in two languages. By pressing an extra button you hear one language and then another, or, if you want, both simultaneously. This is how the Japanese are now learning English.
TVs are everywhere today, but large screens will soon be a must to fit into your new home entertainment, information, and educational center. A vast number of channels is not far away. In 1991 we saw the introduction of Mattel's "Power Glove." Modified, this computer terminal on your wrist will allow viewers to use computers to handle shopping, banking, and stock market manipulations, and to select a sad, happy, or boring ending for favorite soap operas. It is also the first rustic tool with which you can enter virtual reality -- the many new worlds within cyberspace.
To be current, you better build the cost of a good shortwave radio into your budget. They are no longer the crackly, static radios of the past. Today you punch in the digital frequency and get Cairo instantly. If you always wondered what those Morse code signals were saying, "Morse-a-Word" receivers will pick up the signal, translate it into English, and flash it along a reader board for you. Software programs that do the same thing on home computers are also available.
For your musical system, a stereo enhancer, equalizer, or real-time spectrum analyzer will give you enhanced sound. Either standard or cordless phones can be hooked up to your stereo system so you can really hear from your friends. This phone works anywhere in the world; you retain the same number for life; it weighs four ounces, and fits in a shirt or blouse pocket. The old-fashioned wired phone is on the way out because of the new craze for the "untethered" link of this second-generation cordless.
If you haven't yet purchased a CD player, go for the latest. The CD-ROM not only plays great digital sound but can deliver, for example, all the famous art works from the Louvre in Paris, the complete publications of NASA, the fifteen-billion-year history of the world, or the twenty-volume Grolier Encyclopedia -- all on one side of the common 4.5-inch CD. It even handles disks for a Kodak Photo CD. Every home can now have a library on a disk.
What does the future hold? Expect Micro-TV for the home computer, which will give you the ability to select a single picture from TV, freeze it, and include it in a computer printout. If your electronic mail is discussing the eight new countries that entered the United Nations this month, include a picture of today's new map in that E-mail/fax to your mother.
Later on, expect full-time video on the computer screen, as compression transmission allows real-time video to be transmitted over present household copper phone cable. It will carry crunched information that expands once it hits a computer. The fiber-optic cable being hooked up these days will allow the contents of the U.S. Library of Congress, largest in the world with eighty million items, to be downloaded in thirty minutes.
Satellite dishes using the new 20/30, 60 and 90 gigahertz frequencies are now broadcasting in Japan. They carry the new High-Definition TV (HDTV) with 1125 lines of resolution that give crystal-clear pictures. Your present home TV shows 525 lines (when it's new and you're living next door to the transmitter). Present dish size is about that of a cafeteria serving tray. Other frequencies in the 60 and 90 gigahertz range, now in the test stage, will use a dish the size of a dinner plate and later still the size of a saucer.
Eventually, via holographic projectors similar to big-screen projectors, TV stars will come right out of the screen. They will be larger than life, to match the new prices, which will be higher than most of us can afford, at least for the first few years. Plan on watching your first holographic shows occasionally at the local pub.

Hot Art

Several years ago during an especially cold, wet fall day in Paris, I was pleased to notice as I sat at one of those delightful outdoor cafes that I was no longer cold, even though it was still raining on the umbrella over my table. That was my introduction to infrared heating, and I've been a fan ever since.
Now entrepreneur Gord Hamilton, who used to have a large, cold, and drafty house in Toronto (he now lives in British Columbia), has married art and infrared heating technology to produce a practical and inexpensive way to heat homes. Apartment owners who include heat in their rental charges should love him! He manufactures infrared heat panels with scenes painted on them. When framed, they look like works of art. But they are also low-consumption heaters that keep things warm -- things like your body, your chair, and your table but not the surrounding air. If you don't heat that air you don't pay for it. The air can be several degrees cooler than your body, but you won't notice it because you are warm.
The cost is about one-third that of normal commercial heat such as oil, gas, or electrical baseboard heaters, and the "Cheater Heaters" come in three sizes. The largest uses 420 watts of electricity at a cost of about two cents an hour. The smallest costs about three-quarters of a cent an hour to operate. The "pictures" can be moved from one room to another -- all that is needed is a 110-volt wall outlet. Budding artists can purchase the heater panel blank, apply their own artistic talents, and save a bit more on the pre-painted purchase price.
Some heating engineers still find this hard to believe, but Hamilton is producing these "fine paintings" on panels approved by the Canadian Standards Association, and they work. I purchased two to heat my office. Norm Elder, president of the Canadian Explorers Club, painted one with a jungle scene we experienced together during treks through the Kikori rain forest in Papua New Guinea. He thought it would be most appropriate for "hot art." Whenever I feel cold, I just turn on Norm's jungle scene.

Heating with Paint

Think of the money you spend heating your house, never mind what's spent on insulating material. You might want to consider painting your house with Rustol exothermic paint. The paint was developed in Japan and the company is bankrolled by Japanese yen. Just paint the walls. Electrical connections using either silver paste or copper mesh tape provide the hookup. Throw a switch or connect thermal sensors so that as you walk through each room you "turn on" your home.
The principle, although known to engineers for years, wasn't economic until 1990. Today the Rustol Corporation has produced a viscid exothermic paint. It is soluble in organic solvents and dries at room temperature. Its heating range is from 34 to 1,800�F. It requires only one hundred volts at ten amperes to create 1,500�F, although even twelve volts is sufficient for low temperature ranges. It does all this by allowing the electrical current to excite the molecules in the paint. That action creates infrared heat, costing about one-third as much as other electrical heating systems.
Because it is a viscid fluid, the paint can be applied to objects of any shape and a wide variety of substrates. It can be applied to metal, tile, slate, concrete, plasterboard, glass, and even heat-resistant plastics and fabrics. Think of the applications: plates, corrugated materials, pipes, molded products, and even toilet seats. Snow-melting is possible for roads, railways, and parking lots.
The company lists more than two hundred potential applications, from heating airplane flaps to pressing pants -- even heated shoes and hair curlers! In one winter test project Rustol heated an eleven-thousand-square-foot car park for $7,400, compared to the conventional method costing $24,360.
Exothermic paint arose from Rustol's work on producing a heat-resistant anti-corrosion paint for use on automobile mufflers. After Rustol scientists succeeded in that task, they asked: If this paint is heat resistant, would it not be a perfect vehicle for a heat-producing substance? The result: MRX-001, with two types of electrical insulation, and a far-infrared radiation-emitting paint (MRX-002) enhancing heating efficiency. Next, they intend to couple MRX with solar energy.
In one demonstration Rustol engineers take a hotel glass ash tray, paint it, hook the painted ash tray up to their electrical source -- and fry an egg in thirty seconds. Hot stuff!

Outdoor Air-conditioning

A new technology called MicroCool offers air-conditioning -- for outside. It takes air-conditioning where no human-made rapid temperature drop has gone before. In the process known as flash-evaporation, vaporized water molecules instantly evaporate causing rapid cooling in the surrounding area. It's not the mist that cools but the evaporation of the mist, a natural phenomenon.
A tiny nozzle with an outlet one-tenth the size of a human hair is the secret weapon in this war against heat. Ordinary tap or well water (very hard water may require additional treatment) is filtered down to five microns (one-twentieth the width of a human hair). The water is then pumped at up to eight hundred pounds per square inch by an industrial pump/motor combination. From this pump system, two manifold feed lines run to the desired area (typically a patio or swimming area) for cooling. Two lines of one-quarter inch atomizing tubes are installed along the entire patio overhang (and covered with a fascia board), with fogging nozzles every two feet, thereby enabling fogging zones to be established one foot apart. For areas with temperatures up to 100�F, only one line is required. For extremely hot temperatures, as in Saudi Arabia, an additional over-100�F line cuts in. Doors and windows can be left open; the cool air created on the patio may waft inside! Electrical and water costs are minimal at about twenty cents an hour. Mist evaporation cooling costs are reportedly lower than those for standard air-conditioning, although high winds and very high humidity can reduce efficiency.
After two years of testing in the desert country of the American southwest, MicroCool installations are now in auto service centers, retail outlets, hotels, and restaurants, including McDonald's and Burger King. One is reportedly in the home of a Saudi prince. More than five hundred installations have been completed in the Palm Springs, California, area in the past two years.
Not only humans are keeping cool: equestrian centers use the system to keep expensive horses and polo ponies in shape. Hothouse owners report that their plants now grow better. Agricultural installations from Napier, New Zealand, to Cheshunt, England, report improved growth factors with MicroCool. Some locations are now testing this system for growing plants aeroponically (without soil or water), and industrial sites are testing the process to make large indoor work sites more hospitable.

Car Condos

The new growth area for real estate? How about car condos. In Boston, car condos started selling in 1979 at the Brimmer Street Garage for a mere $7,500 each. Today, they fetch $130,000! In Brooklyn Park's Slope Garage, condos that sold in 1989 for $17,000 now go for $39,000. Down payments run from 25 to 40 percent with the balances amortized over ten to twenty years. Price depends on location. Sometimes buying is a bargain, even without considering appreciation, compared to renting a garage. In some other locations, the cost runs slightly more than rent.
This concept is coming from Southern California Edison Company, one of the largest electrical producers in America. Southern California Edison proposes a solar-powered carport with emission-free charging while the car is parked during the day. Conventional thinking about electrical cars has been that the main recharging would take place while cars were home in their suburban garages. The new thinking is that perhaps cars can be better charged, with less damage to the environment, when parked in an urban location, usually for six to eight hours. Now charging can take place at both locations. Suburbanites can charge supplementary battery packs during the day when the car is downtown, and this stored energy can then be used to top up a vehicle battery beside the house at night or when the weather has been overcast during the day.
With a few thousand electrically powered cars (and potentially 200,000 by the year 2000) starting to appear on the streets of California cities, Southern California Edison wants to be ready. Why? Because in a few years both car manufacturers and public utility companies will be obliged to produce a simple method to recharge electric vehicles. Once prices come down -- and environmental taxes are added to gasoline-powered cars -- the changeover could be dramatic. In a related project, Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power are cooperating to bring ten thousand electric vehicles to city streets by 1995.
This has created a partnership between Southern California Edison and the South Coast Air Quality Management District to produce a pollution-free recharging unit. The result: a carport with solar power. The roof of the three-thousand-square-foot solar carport would have photovoltaic solar panels to recharge the cars during the day. On rainy or dull days, power would be drawn from the regular power grid. Texas Instruments Inc. is working with the California utility to provide the panels. Although expensive at the moment, solar panel prices have been dropping over the last decade. When these three heavies get together on this project, breakthroughs may make solar power competitive with more conventional recharging alternatives.
If things work out as expected, Southern California Edison will have the first prototype fully functional within a year. Eventually they would construct car condos in public parking areas throughout their service area. "Park and Charge" will take on new meaning.

Park without Coins

How often have you parked your car, reached into your pocket and found no change? And when you leave your car to find some, you get that $20 parking ticket. So who's got a better idea? A Norwegian company called Park-O-Card. Their "social invention" can clear city streets of those inanimate highwaymen known as parking meters, downsize the bureaucracy, and provide municipalities with the same amount of revenue -- at less expense. As a result, more money could go into general revenue to keep property taxes down.
Park-O-Card is a credit-card size device containing a microchip, a small long-lasting lithium battery, and a light crystal display (with a service life of fourteen thousand hours). Customers buy up to $300 worth of parking time from the city or parking lot operators. The cost of the card is absorbed into this initial purchase. You also now have a receipt for income tax purposes. Try getting that out of a meter!
Here's how it works: The card holder drives into a "zoned" lot that shows time and rates. You set your own built-in meter, and you attach the card to your sun visor, which you turn toward the driver's side window. The decimal point starts blinking to show that the card is working and also that you have a credit balance left on the card.
On returning to the car, you remove the card and stop its countdown, check for the amount left to spend on future parking, and drive away. No hassle. No money wasted on a pre-paid meter if you return early. And best of all, no parking ticket on the windshield.
This system eliminates parking meters. Saved are replacement or repair costs when the meters get hit by cars; high maintenance cost because of slugs, annoyed motorists, or the elements; and the cost of coin collection and possible embezzlement. Park-O-Card allows also more parking because, with painted street locations no longer necessary, small cars that take up less space allow more room for other cars. Park-O-Card can also be used for special-event parking.
This could rejuvenate city-core shopping. The card would work everywhere. Rates day or night and for differing locations could be adjusted by the city or lot owners with an on-location rate-card sign change, as conditions warrant. It's an idea whose time has come.

The End of Libraries

In the age of the "knows" and "know-nots," the speed and cost at which data can be accessed is ever more important. A traditional library has to be accessed geographically. That takes time, a commodity of increasing value. And it usually costs money to travel to the library during its open hours, when your time may be more valuable elsewhere. You can't use less valuable time because libraries adhere to Industrial Age, non-user-friendly hours.
Consider the miniaturization trend in computer storage during the past two decades. In ten years we have moved from microfiche to computer disks. Single disks now are capable of holding more than an entire computer could hold just five years ago. Standard computer disks can now hold more than one megabyte on each side.
The computer world is being flooded with CD-ROMs, 4.5-inch plastic, aluminum-looking disks (the same size as the common musical CD) that can hold up to seven hundred megabytes of data -- in multi-media. Each disk can hold one thousand 300-page books. What does this mean to libraries? One SERODS (Surface-Enhanced Raman Optical Data Storage) can hold the entire contents of the new public library in Vancouver.
Optical disk storage (and the sugar-cube-size crystals yet to come) will provide instant access, from anywhere in the world, for less than the cost of parking your car, to a Gutenberg-style library. Watch for even the dictionary description of the world "library" to change. We have all seen what widespread implementation of the low-cost fax machine has done for business and even the home. Wait until the library-on-a-disk moves in.

Robots at the Pumps

It was only a matter of time. Now, in Danderyd, Sweden, near Stockholm, a company called Transrobot is manufacturing the gas station of the 1990s -- a fully robotized operation. Drivers don't even have to get out of their cars.
You drive into a gas station, as in the old days, and park beside a Tankomatic box-pump, about three feet high. You insert a credit card into the terminal just outside the driver's window. Operating on high-precision sensors, the robot aims for a specially designed lockable adapter and cap, placed outside on all cars. The robot unlocks and opens the cap, inserts its nozzle, and the gas starts to flow. The nozzle is equipped with an airtight seal for vapor recovery. The driver watches the quantity of gas and progress of the operation on a terminal located near his window. If the car should move, or if anyone interferes with the equipment, the robot stops automatically. When it finishes filling the tank, the robot releases the car and locks the adapter. Then the driver retrieves the credit card and moves on.
Transrobot believes that its system should greatly speed up refueling at filling stations worldwide. A slightly more sophisticated system, which incorporates a fuel accounting program, has been designed for buses.

Targeting by Taste

Until now grocery and other retail marketing has been based on saturation. The object: try to get everyone within your marketing area to shop at your store. Store owners today know what they sell but they don't know to whom. An upcoming generation of retail marketing systems will "lead retailers to an unprecedented dialogue with their customers," according to Thomas R. Newkirk, chairman of Direct Marketing Technology, Inc. (DMT), based in Illinois. DMT is a partner and developer with Retail Consumer Technology Inc. of a computerized database that tracks individual retail purchases. A store equipped with this system knows what customers prefer -- it knows their tastes.
The system, called React, is described as a "reporting, response, and promotion package." React requires no special customer card to instigate tracking. Stores program cash registers to accept a telephone number volunteered by the customer at the time of purchase. Every transaction is recorded and matched to that number. The system, designed initially for retailers with a minimum of $7 million in sales, will shortly be supplemented by an update handling sales up to $70 million. Some thirteen hundred retail outlets belonging to The U.S. Shoe Corporation have been testing the program in conjunction with DMT. Six other chains are reportedly in negotiations for the system.
Customer phone numbers in the React system are processed by DMT through a reverse phone directory that matches the numbers with such demographic information as name, address, gender, age, income, dwelling type, and average purchasing power of the area. Most of this information is readily available from telephone white pages, city directories, or publicly available government statistical records. Purchases are recorded by product category or stock-keeping units. Method of payment is also recorded.
With this database, retailers know their customers better. They can make sure that merchandise the customers purchase frequently is always in stock. Retailers now have the same valuable information used by mail-order marketers. This leads to new cross-promotional possibilities. Marketing management now knows what customers are not buying. Retailers can conduct low-cost limited testing by drawing the attention of discriminating customers to new products before these go into mainstream sales. If customers cooperate further, anything is possible: reminders for birthdays and garden specials, and ordering of periodic large dog-food deliveries or floral surprises for certain dates.
Another food industry innovation may soon be the new inspector on the conveyor belt. Human inspectors become bored and sloppy. It looks as if their replacement will be a camera, two color monitors, and a computer that detects size and color abnormalities in potatoes, apples, and mushrooms. All photographs are digitized and assigned file numbers. Scrapes and cuts are easy to identify, but bruises are the big problem.
This development should reduce produce damage and spoilage considerably in years to come, especially when coupled with the now-under-development infrared ripeness beam and with the "artificial potato" that contains its own broadcasting system. The potato will, in effect, report on how it was handled from field harvesting to truck loading to processing plant!

Home Shopping for Groceries

Home grocery delivery is already a standard feature in most large cities, and more and more harried but well-paid workers are willing to pay for such services. Now that orders can be faxed from the office during coffee break, why not be the first on the block to have a twenty-first century "icebox," resembling a large rural mailbox, in the driveway? The food is there when you want it; you're not waiting until it arrives. The "icebox" is similar to a VCR, in that you set the schedule. Food is kept at the right temperature, with no puddle of melted ice cream reminiscent of the time you stopped to pick up the dry cleaning and got trapped in a traffic jam.
Such an outdoor refrigerator would lock after being loaded by the grocery delivery person. Coded credit cards would open it when you arrive home. A spouse might even have your favorite drink, complete with ice cubes, waiting for you in the driveway fridge when you step out of the car.
Some working couples waste as much food as they eat. Frequent delivery of smaller quantities would reduce waste, though do nothing for the cost factor. Convenience compensates for increased cost. This concept could result in a change in food retailing as great as that introduced by the twenty-four-hour convenience store.
The nature of food will change, too. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for example, realizing that smaller units of food will be in demand by smaller families, have created a tiny lettuce that should be on the market by 1995. It will be as tasty and as crisp as full-size lettuce and, with delivery to your driveway fridge, it won't have a chance to go limp in the sun. Perfect for small families who can't eat a whole head of lettuce while it's still fresh and for restaurants that get calls for single-serving salads.
Remember the "reach out and touch someone" ads of the phone companies? Before the turn of the century you will see the "reach out and touch that food product" version of virtual reality move into the home. Picture this: You're out of food. It's raining, the streets are slippery, and your car has been acting up. What to do? Turn on the TV, dial in your favorite supermarket, and take a video stroll down the aisle (with music to shop by). You first put on a virtual reality glove, then reach through your TV screen to that shelf with jars of genetically adjusted "jungle health beans" from Costa Rica, the latest rage. Naturally you can turn the jar around first to read the health-affecting contents shown on the label.
Shopping in this manner gives you an "electronic shopping cart" you don't even have to push. It automatically records items purchased and their cost. To return anything before you reach the checkout counter, hit the cancel button on the screen, and the item will disappear from the cart and the tape. Electronic taste and smell stimulators won't appear for a few more years, until new-style sensors are available. But they too are coming.

Video Carts

Information is power. Now Information Resources Inc. of Chicago and others plan to "entertain and extract" information about your lifestyle and shopping preferences by using "video carts," while you stroll up and down the aisles of your favorite supermarket. Imagine a flat six-by-eight-inch video screen on every shopping cart handle. Sometimes the screen will show a map of the store, offer recipes, and ask questions. Developers say that ads will constitute 15 percent of the video programming, and the remainder will be an in-store video "newsmagazine."
Why would grocery stores want this? Because grocery researchers know that two-thirds of all food-shopping decisions are made in the store. Not you? Check your shopping lists. Most lists have a maximum of ten items, yet most people hit the checkout counter with more than thirty items in the cart. How does that happen? Researchers know, and they believe they can profit from your shopping practices.
The system is high-tech. First, the commercial comes in via satellite from Information Resources Inc. to each store's computer. From there it's broadcast by in-store radio waves to each cart. But it doesn't show up yet on the cart's video screen. Why? Because the customer isn't close enough to the shelf on which that product appears. When the customer gets close to that shelf, an electric trigger plays the ad on that cart only. When the customer checks out, the electronic cash register tells store management how well the idea is working.
In-store advertising, now a $12 billion business, will grow at an annual rate of 17 percent, according to the trade organization Point-of-Purchase Advertising Institute (POPAI). In a relative sense such advertising is inexpensive -- about one-third that of prime-time network TV spots.
Another company, Advanced Promotion Technologies (APT), has already started handing out coupons at checkout counters after shoppers have been introduced to in-store interactive video screens and printers -- to reward shoppers for their interest! APT then determines how many people have purchased the items covered by the coupons by monitoring the checkout counter. APT has booked test arrangements with Ralston Purina, Kraft, Del Monte, and Procter & Gamble (who own a slice of APT). Another company has commercials spreading the word on shoppers' car radios as they drive into supermarket parking lots. And the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company is testing ads and special listings on electronic signs in some of its stores as you read this book.

Talking Posters

You're walking along a subway platform one evening waiting for the next train. An election poster on the wall shows the smiling face and white teeth of a political candidate. As you pass, the poster speaks. "Remember to vote next Tuesday." You stop and study this poster, which would normally be lost in the maze of poster ads. You're hooked. It's another Japanese innovation: talking posters or "transmittal art" to its supporters.
Two examples of talking posters recently exposed to the public in Japan were a young lady, in an election publication from Nagoya, and a group photo telling citizens how they can participate to create the new city-concept for Shizuoka. The operation is fairly simple and the same speaking-mechanism chip can be reprogrammed for a different poster. The framed poster can be easily hung or relocated. But it must be hung securely to prevent souvenir seekers from pinching it.
For the first time conversation has become visible. As a display piece for show rooms, exhibition of new products, sales campaigns, and service counters, talking posters may be the forerunner of other such media. Triggered by an infrared sensor and adjustable to a range of between three and fifteen feet (it works in total darkness), the talking poster unit runs on AC or DC power. It can operate for two months on six 1.5-volt batteries. It is available in playback times of eight, sixteen, twenty-four, and thirty-two seconds and is prevented from continually talking by a ten-second delay between "speeches." Recordings will not fade for a year even with a power failure. More than 300 60-second replays can be performed in one day.
Posters range in size from about ten by twelve inches to thirty by forty inches. They come complete with transparency film and a panel board and frame equipped with an AC power connector.
As an information news service, a guide at counters or festival sites, or as a bulletin board and talking guide directing people to leisure or other facilities, this is the newest way to go. Expect rock concerts, movie spectaculars, and election polling booths to start using the "talking posters" in the near future.

Airborne Advances

How often during long flights have you looked forward to the movie only to find that you've already seen it? Why can't airplanes have multiscreen theaters, allowing you to select from three, six, or even ten movies?
Now you can -- at least on some British Airways routes. Each seat has a small television screen in its back, connected to a video selection control that lets passengers take their choice of six TV channels. This is a first for the fare-paying passenger in the European skies (although not the first ever; some private jets and a few Middle East aircraft have had something similar). These screens for individual viewing are part of the first-class enhanced service on British Airways.
The high resolution, three-inch liquid crystal screens are designed for an aircraft's varying light levels. The system allows a passenger to select from six different productions, including sports, music, news, popular TV shows, feature films, and children's programs. Sound is delivered through electronic headsets, so nearby passengers are not disturbed. Shows rotate approximately every four hours depending on flight duration. A total change in the show packages occurs every month. This new inflight entertainment in British Airways aircraft is called Airvision and is a co-production of Philips Electronics and Warner Bros.
A similar version has been patented by Sony in Europe. This system works like satellite television in apartment buildings. A bank of receivers (VCRs in the aircraft) play different movies. A cable, under the floor of the aircraft, carries all the signals and is designed to "leak" weak FM signals throughout the aircraft. Built into each seat, along with the individual TV, is an antenna that picks up the signals and carries them to the screen. You choose the show you want. This way a wide selection of shows is constantly available to all. You watch when you want to and not when the flight attendants decide you should. The same set can carry stereo sound and video games, and you can even operate both simultaneously.
It doesn't stop there. Sony says the same system could incorporate a word processor, a floppy disk drive, and a printer. Passengers could work on corporate reports or compose letters. As they left the plane, they would receive a floppy disk containing their data, or a paper printout if they had so instructed the seat-back computer. Coming next? Transmission of such data via modem or fax from the plane while en route.