A story of Mobility in 2020 : Paolo's Big Date
By 2020, mobile apps will be much more helpful. They will know about our past habits (if we let them), they will know about our current situation, and they will use computing smarts to help us achieve our goals.
By 2020, “mobility” will encompass a lot more than smartphones and tablets. Smart devices (smart cookers, smart thermostats, smart cars) will have proliferated.
Let’s jump to 2020 and follow a somewhat hapless twenty three year old, Paulo. Let’s see how “mobility 2020” helps Paolo to navigate an important date.
Last week, Paolo’s long-running campaign to get a date with Suzanne from the office took a turn for the better. She was commenting how she missed her mother’s coq au vin. His mouth responded way before his brain was in gear. “My grandmother is French. She cooked a great coq au vin. She taught me. If I say so myself, I cook a pretty good coq au vin myself”.
Actually, a/ his grandmother wasn’t French, in fact, she never went within a thousand miles of France in her entire, long, life and b/ he’d never cooked coq au vin, and more than that, he wasn’t even sure he’d ever even tasted coq au vin.
But he kept digging the hole. “In fact, how about you come around to my flat on Saturday night and I’ll cook you coq au vin?”, he said.
When Suzanne replied, “OK – see you Saturday night”, Paolo nearly fell over in shock.
It’s now Friday evening and Paolo is no closer to a coq au vin. Still, first things first – tidy and clean the house, clean and iron his best clothes.
[Behind the scenes : Like many homes in 2020, Paolo’s house has a sart thermostat in each room. They have worked out his habits – when he’s at home and what temperature he likes at what times of day.
All electrical appliances in his home send information to his local power company. Where practical they do their work at times that minimize his power bills (and the load on the power grid).
And his washing machine, heating system, water recycling system and so on, all send health information to a central home maintenance system. Paolo recently had the heating element in his washing machine replaced, for example, because sensors detected it was covered in lime-scale and was thus wasting energy]
Paolo’s washing machine was turned on at 2:00am by the power company when demand on their grid was at its lowest.
Ever the optimist, Paolo slept soundly in the belief that coq au vin was a simple dish and that he would be a natural in its preparation.
In the next episode, “Paolo goes shopping, mobility 2020 style”.
