And the geeks shall inherit the earth

Being Frank, by Frank Ameduri

The Valley's gone the way of wireless Internet. Now you can take a picture with your phone, shoot it through the air to your computer, fix it up with a little Photoshop action and fire it off to your mom in a matter of seconds, all without hooking anything to anything else with cumbersome cables and wires. It's a remarkable breakthrough … really. It empowers human beings to do even more trifling things at mind-numbing speeds.

Is this the beginning of something amazing? What might our world look like in five years -- in 10? Ten years didn't used to change things much, but now it means a whole new technological era. Think about it. Ten years ago, you would have been shocked and angry if some yahoo answered his phone in the cinema and had a conversation about his bunyons and his mother-in-law's back hair. Now it's just part of the experience -- like squeaky popcorn and sticky floors. That's our new technological age, defined by the unlimited power to connect with a universe of imbeciles and prattle on about mostly nothing.

Anyway, now that we can easily hook up to the grid without wires and such, what might be next? Here's what I think we can look forward to by 2015.

Imagine a highway with no potholes, no speed limits and nary a traffic jam. That's the ol' Information Super Highway, and now it's hovering in the air above your head -- absolutely free from direction or interruption. The real highway is in a bit of disrepair, because only a few delivery people are still driving around in cars. Gas is down to six cents a gallon, but you couldn't care less.

You're at home on your memory foam mattress, flat on your back. You haven't moved for three days, and that was just to take a quick shower and brush your tooth. You're the skinniest you've been since your sophomore year -- because you're hooked to a feeding tube and a catheter. Once a day the nurse drops by to change your bottles. You don't notice him because you're wearing virtual reality goggles and earphones. It's probably for the best, since he looks nauseated the whole time he's in your presence.

There's a nano-chip in your head, and an antenna sticking out of your … well, what do you care? In the VR goggles you look like Adonis, and your hair hangs, thick and wavy, over your chestnut skin.

When you woke up this morning, you accessed a virtual travel agent and arranged a digital walk on the beach, complete with a binary babe at your side. Then you accessed your work database and knocked out three hours of conferencing and strategic planning. At the blink of your eye, factory workers on the Pacific Rim stepped up production of pulsating memory foam mattresses, and stock traders lying on their mattresses on the East Coast blinked into action.

Now you're feeling a little burnt out, so you click out of the work site and hit a virtual casino for an hour. The crap tables are good to you for once, so you make reservations for a dinner show later. Maybe the girl from the beach will join you, or maybe you'll take a virtual buddy, instead. There's no need to decide now.

Back at work, you have a V-conference with a bunch of pasty mattress surfers from Texas. They've signed a labor deal with a manufacturing union in Bolivia, and it looks like they can produce the latest VR goggles for 15 percent less than the Vietnamese -- a huge profit boost. The deal could mean a virtual time share in the Bahamas. Vietnam's out.

Meanwhile, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are zooming around the globe in private jets, breathing cleaner air and swimming in cleaner surf. They wait in line for nothing. It's no skin off your back -- later tonight you'll score a triple-double and become the virtual MVP of the NBA championships. Now, if that's not worth a few bedsores, what is?

Frank Ameduri is afraid of anything that beeps or blinks.