What follows is Margaret Cho’s vision of the computer of the future, which she elucidated for the NY Times. I wish there was a laptop computer that would stay at body temperature, and not heat up to the point of your needing a phone book in between the computer and your lap. It should be extremely thin and easy to carry in one hand, yet with a large enough screen to make watching films very close to like being in a theater, with a surround-sound system loud enough to fill an entire room.
The computer should be powered by solar energy, which could be from any source, not only the sun, so that even the illumination of the screen could keep it going. There would never be any reason to turn it off, because it would always be on. It would also be online all the time, no matter where you are, with a speed-of-light connection, loading pages instantaneously but killing pop-ups before they have a chance to blur your vision. This nifty gadget would be able to find a signal in Antarctica and could double as a cellular phone, a two-way pager, a fax, a stereo and a television.
The memory would be astounding, and there would be room to store thousands of films and reruns of television shows as well as every piece of music ever made. The computer should also have a mood reader, like those rings from the 70’s, where it would change color according to the state of mind of the wearer: the computer would immediately start to play a film that would snap you out of a bad mood or a piece of music to pull you out of any depression.
The machine would be more than just a laptop, but a very good and intuitive friend, dispensing good advice when needed, shutting itself down when it felt that you were overworking yourself, ordering food when you have worked so hard that you forgot to eat and are getting a headache. This laptop would be extremely affordable as well as indestructible, and every time a new model came out, the computer would automatically update itself so that you would have every new feature as soon as it was invented.
It would be a computer that not only served your needs but would anticipate your needs, as well as accomplish those things that we forget to do for ourselves that really are well deserved, like nice hot dinners and back rubs. It would also record television shows that it thought would be interesting for you to see, as well as pre-download music you might like and movies that you are not to live another moment without seeing. Yes. That is what I would want.