The smart wall says it all. I sit here day by day presaging the future. It is so different that I doubt anyone believes it.
Take the smart wall. Let's say it is made in Detroit and that one such surface costs as much as a home entertainment monolith. You need four of them to make up a space. You know about wallpaper right. It is now understood to be what you put on your monitor screen. On the smart wall, you can change your wallpaper whenever you like. When it is dreary outside you can make your smart wall cheery.
The smart wall may have little connectors for the addition of smart furniture. Also mass produced, maybe for a new cyber community in a non-cyclone area. All you need for furniture are surfaces and smart cushions. And smart walls.
Smart walls do not exist in isolation from the smart matrix and the smart floor and the smart ceiling. None of these things exist now because the money is all in Stephenson Nano Land Silicon Role Model Territory. At some point Dreiser and Veblen will reincarnate and we will begin to recover the balance between micro and macro. Micro is soft and we need something more substantial.
All of this rises from a dim but accurate perception. The current world is unsustainable. People are making bold efforts to deny this. The new unbuilt Christie Deep Sixed Hudson River Tunnel is an allegory of our time. There will be no more big digs.
Smart walls says it all. I shall be here knitting away as we continue to avoid the writing on the ...
