A Vision
Actually this is a quasi-response to Fallen Angel‘s post on “The Internet”. I had this vision a couple years ago, and I reckon it’ll come true. After all, UO and EverQuest are the accurate incarnations of seemingly “impossible” gaming concepts I dreamt about (without the lag) when I was 7. Picture this. It will happen in a couple decades I’m betting. (Is this a hackneyed vision?) :
You get on the train in the morning. You sit down and your mobile phone beeps. It’s a message that you have e-mail. Pulling your handheld PC (HPC) out of your pocket, it connects wirelessly to the net and you grab your mail. It’s a mail telling you to look at the newspaper today, which so happens you don’t buy. No matter, you download the frontpage news for the day.
On the way back home, you’re on the train and you’re bored. You want to play a multiplayer-game (and I’m not talking two-player snake over Nokia 6110 phones here). With who though? Your HPC sends out a short-range wireless radio broadcast. It’s answered by one person. One who happens to have the same game and a compatible HPC in the next train carriage along. The two HPCs hookup via a direct connection and you start playing. The game finishes and you end up chatting via IRC/Q, mp3s (or mp4s etc.) playing in the background through earphones. Then your HPC runs out of batteries.
Yes, these people will still be called Yuppies. Only, there will be more of them.
1:30am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow 
