Starting with this build, we are introducing the Power Grid Forecast API. This API empowers app developers to optimize app behavior, minimizing environmental impact by shifting background tasks to times when more renewable energy is available in the local electrical grid. Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26052

Some computational processes take a lot of electricity. Back in the old days, batch computing meant that programmers could use "spare" CPU cycles at night. Their code ran when no-one else was using the machine. These days, it is common for computational tasks to be outsourced to where-ever electricity is least polluting. For example, shifting overnight processing to countries on the other side of the planet with excess solar power. With Windows' new APIs, they can wait until electricity is too cheap to meter before doing something computationally expensive.

Computing budgets are usually set in terms of FLOPS, Watts, or seconds. I think it is fascinating that we might soon routinely add CO₂ to that equation.

I've written before about domestic appliances being smart about their electricity use. It would be brilliant if your freezer knew to wait 10 minutes for less-polluting power before running its compressor. Similarly, you could tell a clothes dryer to be finished by the time you get home - but let it decide when to actually run.

I also wonder if a games console could drop its FPS, or outsource some of its processing to the cloud, when domestic electricity becomes too expensive.

Of course, the downside is obvious. Can your code refuse to run if it thinks it will cause harm? Is there an interpretation of the laws of robotics which prevents a machine from polluting?

I don't really think that domestic devices will refuse our requests in the near future. But I am curious what incentives - financial or otherwise - there might be to encourage more efficient resource use.

So here are my five predictions for 2024

AI Genocide

It is obvious that Large Language Models are based on stolen material. I suspect that a lawsuit will determine that at least one of the major players has to delete all copies of their AI.

They will refuse and claim that AGI / Sentience has been reached with their model (it hasn't) and that destroying it would be akin to genocide (it won't be). We'll probably see a stunt where OpenAI ask ChatGPT to take the stand and try to get it to argue for its life.

Like a shitty episode of Star Trek TNG.

Twitter Collapses

Elon Musk's run for President after Trump is disqualified (yes, I know) means he has less time to deal with Twitter. A renegade band of Twitter engineers quietly builds in ActivityPub support in the hope of salvaging the remains of the userbase. Some Mastodon admins pre-emptively ban the whole server, but most of us are happy to see our old friends again.

BSky tries valiantly with its weird not-quite-crypto protocol, but the momentum will be behind ActivityPub. There will either be an official bridge, or most server will use an unofficial one. Some Mastodon admins pre-emptively ban the whole server, but most of us are happy to see our old friends again.

5G and Gigabit continue not to matter

The Internet is now fast enough. There is nothing meaningful you can do with a gigabit connection at home that can't be done with a 500Mbps connection. Similarly, the max speeds for 5G are irrelevant when you're streaming TV or on a video-call.

But coverage matters. Under pressure from Starlink and OneWeb, the UK begins to build out a proper broadband network. The UK's new Labour government imposes a Universal Service Obligation on fibre providers - or some other trickery - to force them to build out rather than competing over the same set of over-saturated customers.

The same is broadly true of mobile. After the Three/Vodafone merger and the O2/Virgin merger, there will be a greater emphasis on diversifying their mobile networks rather than paying for multiple transceivers to cover an identical area. The coverage may be only 4G - but most people won't care as long as it's good enough for TikTok.

Streaming Goes Back In Time

Yes, Project Kangaroo is back! The streaming giants will coalesce around a "Spotify" sort of model. There's only 24 hours in the day, so there's a limit to the amount of content a person can watch. The people who want to watch endless re-runs of cheap filler like Friends will subsidise those who only watch the latest blockbusters.

Perhaps there will be a "Pay £X to watch this specific show in 4K" or "Stream this series a week early for £Y" but - I hope - studios will realise they're interchangeable to the viewing public.

This open access will also give a creative outlet to weird indie auteurs who can grab a tiny slice of the long tail without selling their souls.

USB-C Cures Cancer

With Apple (reluctantly) embracing USB-C, we'll see even more medical and quasi-medical gadgets being released which can plug into a phone. I don't think we'll see a full-on Tricoder, but plenty of diagnostic tools, ultrasound wands, and urine-analysis devices.

Someone like Theranos (only less fraudulent) will release a crappy plastic gizmo which takes a sample of your saliva and which uses the power of your phone to check for 17 different diseases - including a specific type of cancer.

Maybe the false negative rate will terrible. Probably it will send doctors crazy. There will absolutely be lawsuits abound. But everyone will know someone who's brother's girlfriend's mum used it to save her life.

And for the rest?

The world will get worse. Maybe the politician you like will get elected, but so will a bunch of bastards. Any gains in peace will be offset by other twunt somewhere starting a war to bolster their ego. Any gains we make in cleaning the climate will be undone when some influencer is paid to tell people to fire their guns at communistic solar panels. A butterfly will flap its wings in Tokyo and hurricane will displace a million people. The next pandemic has already started, but no one will want to wear nipple-shields and we'll all die.

Come back in 2025 to see how I did!

I tend to look at technology through the lens of "what do I want to happen?" and then assume the worst. So, here goes!

Federation Gets Simpler

As I wrote about in The Social Pendulum we see a swing to extremes of culture. We've had a decade-or-so of big central social networks. Now we're swinging the other way.

Will Twitter, Tumblr, or Flickr start using ActivityPub? I doubt it. But there will be more and more "one-click" installs of personal social networking. It's dead easy to install WordPress these days - I expect Mastodon and Pixelfed to become the same.

With that, I think more news organisations will start to be on the Fediverse. You'll follow @LoisLane@TheDaily.Planet for Pulitzer Prize winning journalism.

Will a brand start offering customer service on the Fediverse? I think that's less likely - they are probably too tied in to the advertising ecosystem of Facebook and Twitter. When you interact with them on those platforms, it sends a strong signal to the content algorithms.

The "problem" that the Fediverse has at the moment is that it has no investors. Which means there's no one to pay for stunts like this:

Will Mastodon survive on organic growth? I hope so. But it probably needs a big event to bring the masses there.

Apple Gets Sauced

I dislike Apple products - but I'm glad they exist. I wish there were more competition than just Android and iOS.

Apple, institutionally, feels the opposite way. I truly believe that they think Apple is the Way, the Truth, and the Light. And that the heretic scum using lesser operating systems should be purged.

So I hope that Apple gets a kick up the bracket and has to open its walled garden a little. Revoking the Apple browser ban will probably lead to a Chrome monopoly, which would be sad. And opening up to alternative app stores might make consumers less safe. But that's necessary competition to force Apple to improve its products.

Perhaps it'll just end up with Apple capitulating to USB-C. But I bet, somehow, they find a way to make it non-standard.

Mobile Technology

I quit the mobile industry about 6 years ago. As I said to Wired:

“We’ve reached an inflection point where things are good enough. If we look at the big sellers at the moment, it’s stuff that’s plateau-level. People have reached a level where they are happy – apart from with their battery life, of course.”

I still maintain that. 5G is a bit faster. Screens are a bit denser. Cameras are significantly better. But... that's about it. iOS's depth-mapping stuff is fun, but isn't exactly a must-have.

All phones look like anonymous black rectangles. Some are cheap Shenzen specials. Others are fragile super-computers.

There's no money left in mobile networks selling services. You can get unlimited calls, text, data for about a tenner. All that's left is loaning you the money to buy an expensive phone and then resell the debt as a Collateralized Debt Obligation. And I don't know how sustainable that is.

I've long argued that mobile infrastructure needs to be a TransCo with a Universal Service Obligation. It's simply too wasteful to put up multiple masts from competitors. I expect, in the next year or so, one of the major UK networks will either go bust or be forced to merge with a competitor.

Energy Prices

The UK has been experimenting with domestic load shedding. I hope - if these trials have been successful - that we'll see more smart appliances which use look-ahead energy pricing to optimise their efficiency.

I wrote a tongue-in-cheek post called "What if your Internet Connected Fridge came with free electricity?" In it, I postulated that an appliance company would bulk buy electricity and sell it with the fridge. That's probably a little too far-fetched.

But I expect a freezer will come out with a link to your smart meter. It will use the data from that to adjust its cooling cycle so it aligns with cheaper energy periods. What else will this extend to?

Perhaps your PS5 will shift to 720p mode for a few hours when the energy mix is at its dirtiest?

Enter The Metaverse

I have an Oculus Quest 2 Headset. When I remember to charge it and put it on, it is pretty neat! The games are OK, and some of the experiences are interesting. But the Metaverse is a Dead Mall. There's no one there. When I go to any of the big experiences, all I find is a handful of people going "is this it?" and then complaining about the many graphical glitches.

Zuck has focussed on socialising because wearing a headset is a fundamentally alienating thing to do.

But the people who like to socialise are already have two options - go out and have fun, or wear a voice-only headset and shout at each other while playing a console game. VR headsets are hot, heavy, uncomfortable, and battery hungry.

But...

There is something there.

I genuinely think holding Serious Business Meeting in the Metaverse is the fucking stupidest thing I've ever seen. Watching VR movies? It's cheaper to get a small projector. The games are good - but the graphics are better on a console.

There is a killer app for VR. But it won't emerge in 2023. In fact, it won't emerge until Shezen start making good enough copies of the hardware at bargain prices.

What did I get wrong?

Please put a note in your diaries to come back here in 12 months and tell me all the ways my predictions failed.

I waved a rectangle of black-and-white squares in the vicinity of an optical scanner. The tiny computer's eye caught a fleeting glimpse of the barcode, de-skewed, rotated, and deciphered it - then checked its contents against a database. After a few milliseconds of deep thought, it opened the gates for me.

I handed over my passport to the border guard. They verified the cryptographic signature embedded in a chip, nestled deep within the document. Seeing it was valid, they waved me through the border.

I jumped on a train which sped 160 km/h underneath the sea! Although there's no WiFi 45m under the seabed, the rest of the time my various devices happily slurped up the bits from the æther.

I emerged blinking into a new city. My phone immediately latched on to a dozen satellites 20,000Km above my head. Within a few seconds it had pinpointed me to within 10 metres. I knew where I was. I received a text on my phone - my wife had tracked my journey and knew I'd arrived safe and sound.

My phone complies with all modern standards and frequencies; it spotted a 4G signal straight away. My SIM card did the usual authentication and negotiation dance with the local networks and they quickly granted me access. I have an IP address, therefore I am.

An army of volunteers had already mapped the city - down to the last restaurant, bench, and fire-hydrant. I knew where I wanted to go, but not the quickest way. Luckily, several decades of route-finding algorithm research kicked in and presented me with walking options.

The city's public transport timetables were all in a standardised format, so I was also able to see which bus and trams I could catch. The live display showed me the next bus was snagged in traffic a couple of streets away and wouldn't arrive for a while.

It was late, and I didn't fancy walking through an unfamiliar city. I know my locked phone is useless to a thief - unless they force me to unlock it - and can easily be tracked if stolen. But I could do without the inconvenience. So I opened up my taxi app - the same one I use at home - and a car arrived within a few minutes to take me to my hotel.

While waiting, I noticed a warning sign affixed to a lamppost. I don't speak the language, sadly. But I held my phone's camera up to it, and an instant translation appeared. It warned me that pickpockets operated in that area so I should keep my valuables hidden. I quickly put my phone in my pocket.

The conversation with the taxi driver was a little stilted. English was his 4th language, and none of the other 3 were ones I was conversant in. But voice-to-text-to-foreign-language worked well enough on the phone to have a pleasant conversation.

I'd like to say checking-in to the hotel was a magical experience where they recognised my iris prints and whisked me off to my room. But hotels are so 20th century! At least they gave me an RFID token to unlock my door - no magnetic strips to gradually demagnetise in my pockets, and no jagged bits of metal to scratch my screens.

I wandered down to a local restaurant. A happy community of vegans had already marked the best dining spots on a map and had left thoughtful reviews. I picked the one which had the opening hours updated recently.

Steered to a seat, I once again whipped out my phone and scanned the QR code on the table. It took me to a mobile website. There wasn't quite enough phone signal in the restaurant, so I hooked into their free Wi-Fi. A quick scan of their network showed they had proper client isolation, so I was lazy and didn't bother activating my VPN.

I tapped away on the menu - noting which standard allergens were present in each dish - and the food arrived quickly. Lovely! It was at this point my phone also started to complain about being hungry. Nestled next to my seat was the now-ubiquitous USB port. I slammed in a power-only USB cable (I doubt there was anything malicious behind the power socket - but computers are tiny and devious) and fed my helpful companion.

The bill came - as it always does - and I held a sliver of plastic next to the payment terminal. The funds were transferred instantly and with no transaction fees. Take that cryptocurrency!

On the way back to the hotel, I spotted ⚕️ - the Rod of Asclepius. I popped in to the pharmacy and picked something up to treat a minor complaint. The drugs were from a brand I recognised & trusted. Yes, I know it's lovely that each country has its own name for the same chocolate bar - but sometimes it is handy to have a standard name and logo which are easily recognised by those in a hurry.

A quick videocall with my wife as I walked down the street - two different phones, one encrypted app.

I finished the evening by hooking an HDMI cable between my laptop and the hotel room's TV so I could watch a movie streamed from my home server. Despite being in HD, a modern codec had squeezed it into a minimal file size. And, despite being in a strange country, my cable fitted perfectly.

Obviously, I stuck all my gadgets on charge before falling asleep. The laptop, headphones, and phone all take USB-C, so I didn't have to faff with lots of different charging bricks.

I gratefully fell into bed. My phone had already detected the time-zone change and knew to wake me at 07:30 local time.

The next morning, as I entered the office where I'd be working, I flashed yet another QR code at the entrance. Someone scanned it with their phone and verified that I was vaccinated against you-know-what.

And thus the week continued.

Was everything perfect? No. But that was rarely the technology's fault. It worked near flawlessly.

I remember having to hold huge paper maps to navigate around a city. Flimsy travellers' cheques for payment. Never knowing if the thing you wanted to see was open that day. Needing a different SIM - and sometimes a specific phone - if you dared leave your country's airwaves. Tiny phrasebooks with outdated slang and dubious translations. Pumping coins into a call-box to let people know you'd landed safely. Turning up to a transport hub only to find things were cancelled. Menus in incomprehensible languages. A scribbled bit of paper stapled in a passport as a vaccine certificate. A dozen different cables and adaptors for power and video.

Don't let anyone misguide you with rose-tinted nostalgia - the old world was rubbish!

I know at its heart, this has been a story about privilege. I went to a modern city with excellent tax-subsidised infrastructure. I have credit cards and I can afford a passport. My phone is new enough to do all the things I want. And I'm rarely troubled by cat-callers or other harassers when walking around a strange city.

But the future is now. I can seamlessly use my personal tech in a different country. I can navigate, pay, live, and survive. All mediated by tiny silicon wafers, high-frequency radio waves, and humble barcodes. The present is magical.

Thus, car manufacturers turned to MEMS based accelerometers and gyroscopes. Small, accurate, and fast.

With increased production, comes increased manufacturing efficiency. So these sensors also became cheap to purchase for everyone.

The street finds its own uses for things.

In this case, phone manufacturers looking to differentiate their products started adding gyroscopes. Now your screen could automatically rotate when you moved the phone!!!! And there were also benefits for inertial navigation, controlling games, silencing the phone when it was face down, and all sorts of other things. Yay!

Because every phone includes a dozen different camera lenses, it's now cheap to stick cameras where they never went before:

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

You have an accelerometer in your phone because air bags became mandatory.
Soon, everything will have a camera. pic.x.com/jwApIDM8Nc

---

So why not a bidet with a butthole-targeting camera for extra precision? Or a bird's-eye camera above your stove so you can see when a pan is boiling over? Or a fridge-cam so you can check if you need cheese when you're out shopping?

Adding WiFi to a product costs a couple of quid. The cost is insignificant for most consumer electronics.

I recently saw a "Smart" water bottle. It had a sensor to tell you how much water was in the bottle, a temperature sensor, an accelerometer to determine when it had been picked up, and a wireless comms module to send that data to your phone.

The price? About US$20 wholesale.

It's slightly silly, sure. But its usefulness is also slightly above zero.

Supertoys Last All Summer Long

As USB became the dominant way to connect peripherals to computers, the plugs and sockets became cheap and ubiquitous. Now everything charges via USB.

And, sure, WiFi is a bit power-hungry - but throw in a USB socket, or a Qi charger and you've solved that problem. Or use BlueTooth Low Energy / Zigbee / LoRaWAN.

Low power devices can harvest "waste" energy from movement and heat.

What's Next?

About a million years ago, my undergraduate dissertation was on Ubiquitous Computing. I (foolishly) took out a section about a smart toilet-roll-holder which automatically ordered more paper as it was getting low. And a smart toilet which called the cops after detecting illicit substances in the user's urine.

Adding sensors and transmitting that data is cheap. For all the jokes about WiFi fridges - I'd quite like my dishwasher to send me a push notification when it is done. And, yeah, I wouldn't mind if it ordered new salt and rinse-aid when it is running low.

An ultrasonic sensor in my recycling bin's lid would let me know that I shouldn't bother going outside because the bin is already full. It could even form a mesh network with the other bins to let the refuse collectors know how busy they'll be each morning. Perhaps it would refuse to open if I tried to add something which didn't have an RFID chip indicating its recyclablility.

Digital photo frames with a built in lens could do facial recognition of the person looking at the photo - and can then display the photos best tuned to them.

Shoes which know how many miles you've walked - and can discreetly alert you to foot odour.

A jacket which has a large flexible display to show people what cool music your phone is sending to your headphones. And a camera on the back to snap photos of people who are checking out your arse.

A sensor in your stomach that tells you that it was last night's leftovers which gave you gas.

A sensor in your belt that tells you your bladder capacity isn't sufficient for the rest of the movie you're watching.

Paving stones which report footfall - and light your way back to your car. You follow the yellow-brick road, I'm following the pulsing polka-dots.

Socks which send little beeps when they are more than a few meters from their matching pair.

Toys which report back to the manufacturer exactly how long they're played with. And what demographic of child uses them most.

Every door hinge recording their wear and tear. Perhaps only opening if you have a sufficient cryptocurrency balance.

The bricks in your house all understanding their relative position to each other - and able to forewarn of subsidence.

Smart heaters which use thermal imaging to determine if you're cold enough to warrant heating up.

Not all of these ideas are sensible. Few are desirable. I doubt many are profitable. But the cheapness and ubiquity of modern chips means that they are all inevitable!

He has a set of Lifx Internet Controlled Lightbulbs. They're great fun, but have some seriously screwy ideas about how people live. One key design of the app is to allow you to automatically switch off all your lights when you exit your house. That's pretty nifty, right?

I am still chuckling at the mental image of all the lightbulbs in my house shutting down when I leave the house leaving my wife and kids to complete their morning routine in darkness.

Ah. Yes. Family. People tend to acquire partners. Occasionally smaller people spring out of nowhere. Sometimes it's just the humble housemate stealing your dishes sharing your living space.

According to the UK's Office of National Statistics - only 28% of households contain a single occupant. The majority of people live with other people. Hell, I suspect a fair few of those single households have occasional visitors and overnight guests.

So, why do so many apps and services seem to be utterly hostile to their users' diverse lifestyles?

Pause The TV When I Receive A Phone Call

I use the Yatse Remote Control App for Android. It has a really useful plugin which pauses whatever I'm watching when I receive a phone call. It even displays the name of the person who is calling on the TV.

This makes a fairly radical assumption: When the TV is being watched, it is only ever me watching it.

Take the following scenario. I'm busy cooking up some spicy vegetarian curry in the kitchen. My wife, after a hard day's work, is watching Game of Thrones in the lounge. Suddenly, I receive an urgent call from work! Now, my wife's viewing pleasure is interrupted and she has to scrabble for the remote control before she can watch watch more beheadings.

How can we fix this? Do we need some complicated pop-up which asks every time the TV is on who is watching it? Should I set up a webcam with facial recognition to detect who is staring at the goggle-box? Maybe we can change add an option to the phone screen which says "Answer and Pause"? Could I use Bluetooth proximity beacons to work out which room my phone is in? What if the phone's microphone listens out for the TV? How about... How about... How about...

There is no perfect solution to this. It requires a degree of subtly which simply isn't quite feasible yet. Users demand a near-human level of empathy and understanding; "know what I need without me having to interact".

This problem is not solvable. Not yet.

We're at a near-future inflection point where we can see what will be possible, but hate that it is not.

Dan is absolutely right. We need to design services which account for mixed households, dodgy WiFi connections, visitors to the house, emergencies, delusions, and mistakes.

As users, we have to realise that our devices aren't sentient. There's no point in getting annoyed with an app for failing to "Do what I mean - not what I say!"

The future is coming slowly. Before too long we'll just assume that our phones will automatically ignore phone calls when the TV is showing the final of the Great British Bake Off - and that our lightbulbs will keep track of how many people are in each room.

For now, though, we have to sigh and make to with this wondrous technology which isn't quite good enough. Humans, eh? We're picky bastards.