2007: Will everything end up in one device?

Morris, now

This is Then and Now. I'm Morris Misel. For more than 30 years I've been on radio talking about what's coming next.

In every episode I play you something I said with the date on it and nothing changed and then I tell you how it actually turned out and what I make of it now. It's Saturday the 20th of January 2007, back on 6PR with Todd Johnston, and he wants my top 10 for the year. 11 days earlier, Apple had dropped the word computer from its name.

Jobs were easy to find, money was flowing and the big words were convergence and the PDA, which, if you're under 30, was a phone that wished it was a computer. I start with a big claim and then I end up talking about your fridge. Have a listen.

On air: 6PR Perth, Saturday 20 January 2007, with Todd Johnston

Sure. I can preface it. One of the big statements I made at the end of last year going into this year is that in the last two years, I think we've seen the equivalent of 20 years of growth.

I'd agree. And I went even further and I said that, and I still say that in the next 10 years, we're going to experience about 100 years of change. As long as I don't age that quickly, that's okay.

No. In fact, it'll be the exact opposite. You'll age slower.

The next one is video and audio and business communications. Again, we've spoken a lot about that. We're going to see a lot of video and audio haunting us now.

We're used to the telephone, which is what you and I are talking on. But if you take something as simple as Apple, the Apple Corporation, they announced two weeks ago that they were no longer known as Apple Computers Inc. And they're just known as Apple Inc.

And that's it. Okay. And what they're talking about is that they don't see the computer as being the central beast anymore.

That what we're going to find, and this is really tips three, four and five merged into one, is that all of our media, all of our communication, all of our interaction is going to come into one central something. It'll either be the phone that you carry, the PDA, which is an upmarket telephone with all sorts of bits and pieces attached to it. It might be your computer.

It might be, it might be your fridge or your microwave because both of those have internet access now if you want them to. I saw a fridge the other day with a television on the front door. Isn't it useful?

Well, not if you're in the kitchen. Well, absolutely. But I don't know, it just doesn't seem to work for me.

And in years to come, you'll be able to ring your house and tell it to put on the air conditioning at a certain temperature. You can do that already. Oh, no.

Yeah. All right. I'll be right here.

And the fridge one, if you want to take the fridge one even further. On the Apple. The fridge one, when you put your food into some of them, and this is very, very high tech, not yet scoped across the market, it zaps the barcode on the product into the fridge.

Every time you take it out, it zaps it out. If it doesn't go back in, it puts it onto your shopping list to say you need it again. And if you want it to, we're told in the next year or so, it'll actually put that shopping list through the Coles or Safeway or wherever you shop and order it for you.

That's what we're told may happen. I think we're a little bit way off, but you don't have to. It'll be a malfunction.

Oh, absolutely. You'll end up with 38 packets of, six packs of yogurt. It'll be delivered to your fridge.

My kids will go, they'll make sure the chocolate biscuits don't go back in so that they're always re-ordered.

Looking back

That one central something I was reaching for where everything you watch here and say ends up in one place. I said it might be the phone you carry, or the computer, or even your fridge. On the very same day, Apple changed its name.

11 days before Todd and I had this chat. It unveiled the iPhone. I didn't name it, but the phone was on my list and the phone is where it all ended up.

The fridge that reorders your yogurt when you run out and the chocolate biscuits my kids would make sure never went back in so they'd always be reordered. I've yet to meet anyone with one, so I'll mark that one as not yet, although we aren't getting closer. And the big claim, 100 years of change in 10 years, you can't measure it.

But if you lived through the 10 years that followed, I don't think it's an exaggeration. Apple dropping computer from its name told me more about where the money was heading than anything it said out loud that year. Next time, we're in 2008, the year the money stopped.

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