Register to vote

I saw a post the other day saying that only 14% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing.  Which begs the question, what the hell are those 14% smoking?  I know, I know, bitching about Congress is nothing new.  Hell, one of my favorite quotes from Mark Twain is, “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.”

Every election we hear people cry, “Vote the schmucks out!” But in order to do that, you first have to be registered to vote.  Now there are registration drives every election year, but why wait?  If you’re just turning eighteen, or never bothered to register before, or are unsure if you’re registered, do it now and beat the rush.  There are places like RegistertoVote.org and the League of Women Voters that can help you register.  Or, if you’re uneasy using a third party website, you can also use your state website, which is usually your state name.gov.

There are various state elections this year, but next year the entirety of the House of Representatives and about a third of the Senate will be up for reelection.  If you think we’d be better off voting the schmucks out, start preparing now.

Possible Futures – Plastic plants

Something that I am a huge supporter of is 3D printing.  For those who don’t know, 3D printing is where three dimensional objects are made by “printing” thin layers of material on top of each other.  Right now most printers are small and use a type of plastic, but the various companies building them are working on making them bigger, faster, cheaper, and using more types of materials to make more complex objects.

I strongly believe that 3D printers will lead to a convulsion in the economy as people print things at home instead of going to a store to buy them.  Instead of focusing so much on producing items in factories, our economy will be more about procuring resources to feed into the 3D printers in our homes.  Which is where this idea comes from.

It may be possible to genetically modify something like a tomato plant to produce a plastic fruit instead of something edible.  But instead of being cheap ornamentation, you’d pick one of these plastic fruits and feed it into your printer whenever you wanted to print out a new chew toy for your dog.  People may have a food garden to feed their family, and a plastic one to supply the material to build things for them.

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An earlier version of this post appeared on Persona Paper in December 2014.

Possible Futures – Trial stores

In the not too distant future, there may come a day where the supercomputer – or low level AI – that runs your house notices that you are almost out of toothpaste.  It will then order some, possibly scheduling the delivery to occur at 3 AM so as to not disturb you.  Either an autonomous drone would fly the package to a dronepad on the roof of your house, or an autonomous delivery truck will drive it to your house and a robot will walk it to your front door.  Your botler (robotic butler) will take delivery and place it in the bathroom for you to find in the morning.

But your house wouldn’t just keep you in a steady supply of toilet paper, it would also keep you supplied with bananas, coffee, and mint ice cream.  Instead of you taking a minute to open your cabinets to see what you need and making a list, your house will either just reorder it or you’ll go, “House, I’m hungry for lobster,” and it will arrange to have some flown in to you.  And unless you’re particular about preparing it yourself, your botler will take care of everything.

For people who stick to the same brand of toothpaste, or coffee, or whatever for years, such a setup would be ideal.  But for people who want to try new things, I predict the emergence of what I’m calling trial stores.  These would be stores where, instead of having full size bottles of shampoo, would just have trial sized bottles.  But instead of having just a shelf full of Brand X shampoo, there would be dozens, or hundreds of brands from manufacturers all over the world.  You’d select a handful, take them home and try them.  Any you like you’d tell your house and it would add them to the list of brands to order.  You could have it set up that when you run out of the Number 1 Brand on the list, it orders the Number 2 Brand, and just cycles through them all.  Or you could have it set to random, or you could say to make sure you have Brand Y whenever you’re going on a date, or any other setup you can think of. 

Now these trial stores could be completely autonomous with robots stocking shelves and an Amazon Go style checkout.  There could also be systems – screens or more robots – you could ask for suggestions.  But I think, especially at first to make older people more comfortable, there may be human sommeliers, but for shampoos.  “You’re looking for a flowery shampoo?  Well I tried this Vietnamese brand last week and I really enjoyed it.”

You may be asking, if your house can just order stuff online, why doesn’t it just order a sample pack of a dozen or so types of pudding to see which you like.  That will also happen.  But people like to get out and be with other people.  How often while you’ve been grocery shopping have you seen people who bump into someone they haven’t seen in months?  Probably an important part of a trial store will be a little café for customers to just sit and chat for a bit.  Especially when things can be so easily ordered online, such cafés would be an additional reason to go out.

Automation – in the production and delivery of items – will drastically change the everyday idea of shopping.  We may not end up with trial stores, but the stores we have now won’t last forever.