A simple fetish

Or when technolust rears its ugly, insatiable head.

If I had my way, this is what I want my next computer to be.

I want it to be an Apple laptop with a keyboard that rises up and folds out for more handspace. You know, the kind you once saw on IBM laptops. The screen is, of course, full color and not backlit, but instead of just a single screen, I want your main screen up the middle and a pair of side screens that open up like saloon doors to butterfly out with all the curvy, elegant beauty found in classic Greek arches, but beveled in half and hinged on each end of the main screen to open up and away. Like a refrigerator, when you open the butterfly screen from their off position against the main screen, arcing them open, the screen light would flash on. Once activated, you can use the butterfly screens as a sort of bone yard for applications you aren’t using fully right then, but don’t want to minimize.

For example, in my main screen would be my text file for my novel or a blog entry. On the left butterfly screen would be my mp3 player and my instant messenger application, both active. I could mouse over from one screen to the next and resume an i/m session or fiddle with the mp3 player to cherry pick a Massive Attack remix. On my right butterfly screen is my Web browser displaying content I’ll use for my blog entry. Again, with the mouse, I can drift back and forth between all three, dragging and dropping applications onto the different screens as priority allows.

Too wacky? How about this approach. Make the hard drive about the size of an iPod and completely detachable. Plus, build a tiny mp3 application into it so you can plug in your headphones and listen to some tunes while you carry your hard drive around with you. No more clunky laptops to struggle with. Just make the hardware itself generic and have the hard drive as your key item. Equate laptops with fancy docking engines and have your little juice box hard drive as something you can plug into anywhere.

Sure. It sounds impossible, but dreaming this stuff up is how real innovation starts, right?

Today’s Word: Rocket

From One Word

Nazi engineers built them to reach England and, one day, the entire world. The U.S. space program is built on the backbone of an Axis program designed to slaughter millions. Incredibly phallic, a long-distance spear. A triumph of finding escape velocity.

P.S.

I have a guest essay ready for Mayamaya’s blog. It should be up there soon. I’ll let you know more as it happens.