All the objects in our lives may soon be screaming at us and trying to get our attention. Hooray technology! Progress! From microchips in diapers that send a text message to the parent when little Billy needs a change to slippers for grandma that can detect if she’s fallen and can’t get up, engineers are hard at work figuring out how to make our inanimate objects talk to us.
U.S. carriers are betting they can get “wireless penetration”–now around 90%–up to 300% or 400%. In plain English, that means they need every man, woman and child in the country to each use three or four wireless products, a goal that can’t be accomplished with phones alone.
“From our perspective, we don’t think anything is off limits,” says Glenn Lurie, head of the emerging devices unit at AT&T Inc., set up last year to work with startups to create wireless products.
And:
“Think of what can be gathered just off your feet,” Mr. Schieffelin says. “Why shouldn’t something as innocuous as a data device be placed into fuzzy slippers?”
Let’s see… Ah yes! I have an answer: BECAUSE THEY’RE FUZZY SLIPPERS, YOU MONSTER.
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