Interesting article today about Jon Oxer, a bloke who's been up-teching his life - as a hobby. You know, electronicising his house, car, body, etc.
There's nothing too alarming about this: doubtless there's a lot of techy blokes (and a few women) around the world doing this.
Yet it's interesting to read about some of the things he's done.
He chipped his arm (injecting a rice-grain-sized gadget) to allow him to open the door without a key. He has electronically enabled all [accessible] doors and windows such that he can secure the whole house on command.
He even gets notified of every mail delivery - mostly junk, though, I'd imagine.
Imagine going to bed and forgetting to close/set/turn off something. Then being able to press a few buttons to sort it out without getting up. Presuming the remote is simple enough to remember how to do everything you need.
To his credit, he maintains a principle of getting everything to work invisibly - ie, wireless everywhere, and control mechanisms effectively hidden.
Throughout these projects, it's hard to escape the thought that when something goes wrong, it's going to create such inconvenience. Such as not being able to get in the house. Strongly advised to ensure there are reality override backups for everything - it's easy forget something like that, to dire consequence.
A couple more salient points emerge from the article. First, for someone sufficiently enthused, imagination is just about the only limit to what can be achieved, given the componentry available.
Second: some of the innovations will doubtless prove an expensive waste of time. But out of all this will probably emerge a number of ideas that doubtless have legs. Fertile ground for venture capital.
Interesting to keep abreast of his initiatives - and the bloke's got a blog, so it is possible to keep up. And he says the phone's been ringing off the hook since the article came out.
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