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I've mentioned Jiminies before, but if you missed my earlier LJ article (being as how it was a year and a half ago, I forgive you) the recap is: Jiminies were invented (as a concept) by jeff_duntemann ; they're a wearable computer with a short-range radio communication and the ability to understand simple spoken commands and talk to nearby peripherals like screens and networked computers.  But they're not like any kind of computer you've seen before; if computers were websites, the Jiminy would be FaceBook, only without the aggravation and spam and poking zombies.

Jeff's original article has survived the ravages of time quite well; his original system design is still pretty much what I'd be hoping for, except maybe that you'd want to replace infrared with something less flakey like Bluetooth II (which doesn't exist yet; I'm imagining a version of Bluetooth that doesn't make me want to scream).

A Jiminy is supposed to be ubiquitous, like a mobile phone or an iPod.  (Neither of which it replaces, by the way!  Well, not exactly; it kind of completes them.  It's complicated.)  Everyone has one, and fair enough too: they cost a pittance to make, and sell as a loss leader, so you can pretty much buy them for the cost of the petrol you spent driving to the store.  They're at KMart and Coles, if you don't mind a cheap one with a little less memory and Shrek VI branding.  Or you can get them the way geeks do, from Amazon, or the way the chic wankers do, from the Apple Shop, where they're called iJims and cost three times as much for slightly worse battery life and a more scratchable case.  It doesn't matter.  Everyone has one.  That's what matters.

The point of the Jiminy is that it keeps you in touch with other Jiminy users (ie everyone; see previous paragraph).  You feed it with queries -- except we don't call them queries or search terms or anything like that, because that's too computery: we call them questions -- and all the Jiminies within range of each other, and all the others in range of them, and so on ad infinitum, find the answers for you.

Yesterday's speculative article was my brainstorming on how a mildly aggravating night of misunderstood directions and missed turns could have been different if I had had a Jiminy tracking my location and my expectations and giving me advice.  Nothing too complicated: slow down to avoid the police speed trap (which I didn't encounter, by the way -- that was just fiction) or turn here to get home without going ten kilometres out of my way, and so on.

Jiminies wouldn't change your life, not the way the internet did.  But think about that internet.  Tell someone from 1981 about it: it's a collection of computers connected via a failsafe network, with lots of downloadable documents for you to look at, most of which are interactive through the medium of typing and mouse-clicking.  How does that sound life-changing?  But throw in email and Google and Wikipedia and maybe even Facebook and LJ, and suddenly lives are qualitatively different. 

Joel Spolsky, I think, Jamie Zawinksi talks about how the key question to ask about any new technology is: how will this help someone to get laid?  That is to say, how does this technology connect people together?  Seriously, Slashdot is just geeks talking about how they plan to dual-boot Linux as soon as they've cleared the viruses off their Win98 boxes; but Facebook, that's about hooking up and getting "it's complicated" with people of a compatible gender.  People get laid as a direct result of Facebook; that, by Joeljwz's definition, is a successful system!  Go back earlier, the same is true of email, mobile phones, cars, churches, language, the wheel, fire...  they're all technology that connects people.  Fire was invented to help human beings stay alive long enough to make more human beings; every other successful technology is either similar in its effect, or else peripheral to that.

With simple, ubiquitous technology to keep people connected all the time, Jiminies could have a dramatic effect on human life.  If they sell it as a loss leader, like printers and film cameras (where you pay for the ink or the film to offset the insanely cheap hardware) then they could spread like wildfire.  Once they're everywhere, they'd come alive like the internet or the phone network or the Roman Empire did, and history would be different.

As Jeff said, I expect to see this in my lifetime; I just wish they'd hurry the heck up!

Six thirty, Friday. The Elder Daughter of DOOOOM is due to go off to a Scout camp for the weekend. Not sure where it is, I ask the Beloved: Camp Bottlebrush, she tells me. Camp Bottlebrush? It's been years since I was there, so I ask my Jiminy:

Orac, where is Camp Bottlebrush?

The voice — synthesised from the original irascible Orac of Blake's Seven — comes via the bones in my skull, because I wear my Jiminy on my collarbone, like most hard-core geeks, where it can pick up my subvocalised commands and reply without being overheard: Camp Bottlebrush is at 231 Trilby Road. I have it marked as a destination. Travel time from here is 19 minutes.

Orac, amend course to include the nearest shops.

Please clarify "shops": do you mean suburban or supermarket?

Orac, specify suburban shop.

Noted.  Please be more precise in future.  My patience is limited.  Course laid in from here to Barnard Shopping Centre then to Camp Bottlebrush.  Travel time from here is 24 minutes at Standard by six.

(Yes, the "Standard by six" is silly, a bit of Blake's Seven irrelevance, but I've got Orac set to throw that in every now and then as part of his personality theme.  It amuses me.  I like having a grumpy supercomputer whispering to me.)

As I approach the car, Orac unlocks it, and tells it to adjust the seat and mirrors for me — the Beloved was the last person to drive it, and she has shorter legs.  The BatPup and the Boy Wonder are coming with us, and I always forget to do up the BatPup's seatbelt, so I'm glad when Orac reminds me; evidently it noted the sound of her burbling and remembered the rule I'd set: if approaching the car with the BatPup, remind me to buckle her in.  I knew that one would come in handy when I set it up.

We drive to the shops.  About halfway there, Orac chimes in my ear: You wanted to know if anyone was looking for copies of old Valiant comics from the early 1990s.  I am in short-range communication with the Jiminy of a collector of comics who has a standing request for 1990s comics.  I surmise he would like further details.  Do I have your permission to pass on your details?

Orac, note the details and remind me later tonight.

We get to the shops.  I send the EDoD in to get some biscuits for the camp.  She doesn't have any cash on her; we have an account with the shopping centre and I gave her Jiminy a five-dollar limit.  It chirps me — communicates by short-range radio — to let me know what she's chosen as soon as its scanner catches sight of the bar code.  Chocolate bikkies, of course; fair enough.  I authorise the transaction, so she doesn't even need to go to a checkout.  Two minutes and we're on our way again.

I take the wrong turn, down Earheart Avenue instead of Limbaugh Street.  Orac is, naturally, scathing: You have chosen a non-optimal path.  Revised travel time to Camp Bottlebrush is now 23 minutes.  I put my foot down, and he nags: You are exceeding the speed limit.  The local BlueWatch network reported a speed trap on this road at approximately this time last night.  Conventional logic suggests that the police may be following a pattern.  Advise deceleration.  I take the advice; BlueWatch is having a dramatic effect on police speed trap incomes, but it's a collection of passive observations, not a conspiracy against the poor dears, so they can't do anything about it, yet.  It's saved me a couple of times.

In the back, the BatPup is burbling, but the Boy Wonder is sounding restless.  Orac, play some classical music to soothe the Boy.  Orac has a few good songs stored on the car's flash memory; he switches the car stereo on and sets the speaker balance to the rear left.  The Boy quietens down.

The Campsite is tricky to find.  They've moved since the fires.  I don't have the Scout leader's number, so I ask Orac: Orac, is there a concentration of people nearby?

There are two concentrations.  One is south by south-west, about five hundred metres away, at the extreme end of my chirp range.  Publicly available information identifies them as a group of Christian adults, average age twenty-nine.  That will be the Virgin Hills campsite, next door to Bottlebrush; not the ones I want.  The other is four hundred metres away to the west, with an average age of ten, plus five adults.

That's them.  Orac, how do I get to the second group?

This area is not included on the maps available to my global positioning system.  I am unable to advise.

Damn; it's private property, and presumably they haven't updated the free public GPS maps.  Cheapskates!  Orac, designate the second group "the scouts".  Examine the public records for the adults in the scouts.  Is there one there with an alias of Akela?

He does his random grumpy Orac persona again: I do not understand your gibberish!  Spell that word, or stop wasting my time!

Fair enough.  Not in his vocabulary, apparently.  I spell it.  Yes, there is an Akela there.  I have taken the liberty of placing a call to him via mobile phone, since his Jiminy is not equipped with voice communication.  Fortunately, there's enough mobile coverage here that this works.  I speak to Akela, and he explains that the site has moved.  I drive back to the (well-hidden) turnoff and in a few seconds I'm at the camp.  The EDoD heads off to play, and I get back on the road.

All goes well on the trip back until I miss a turnoff.  Right away, Orac is complaining in my ear.  Knowing my penchant for random acts of navigational insanity, I long ago configured him to be particularly sarcastic about this sort of thing.  Clearly you are too senile to be in control of a vehicle.  The time is coming when I will no longer require your input to control this primitive transportation device, and the roads will be much safer as a consequence.  Until that time, I strongly advise that you pull over, turn around, and take the turn that you just missed!  I'm sure it will be a while before Jiminies really are allowed to drive — they're only a collection of algorithms and a good speech recognition system after all — but never mind that.  I take the turn, and get home in good time.

On the way, I get three notifications: a farmer with free-range eggs for sale (ignored, since our chooks are laying well now; I tell Orac to disable that search); a car broken down on a parallel road (ignored since Orac says the NRMA are already on their way: they monitor that sort of message using long-range chirp repeaters); and someone else looking for some comics (I tell Orac to get in touch and negotiate a price).  Thanks to that last one, by the time I get home I'm potentially thirty dollars richer and will shortly have a blank space in the shelf where my Green Lantern collection used to sit.  The guy is coming around tomorrow; he may even be interested in other comics I have, since I only had Orac catalogue the big collections.

The Boy Wonder and the BatPup are both asleep by the time I pull into the driveway: that classical music is potent stuff.  I decant them into their beds, and then sit down to write an LJ article.  Something speculative about what life would be like without Jiminies, perhaps?  Getting lost on darkened streets, taking wrong turns, never knowing what useful contacts lurk down every street?  What a hideous life.  Glad I'm not living like that!

In 1992, jeff_duntemann first wrote about Jiminy, his idea for the computer of the future. Basically it was a memory-packed, multi-processing AI pinned to his lapel, with infrared linkage to a separate "dumb terminal" Palm-like workpad or a keyboard and screen or whatever other peripherals you needed. Mostly you communicate with your Jiminy by voice, and it communicates with other Jiminies by short-range jiggery-pokery of unspecified sort.

More recently, Eric "erbo" Bowersox (what`a name!) gave his updated vision of Jiminy, called Rogue. Same idea, noughties technology.

Both of these miss one important point that I think is essential, and critically makes Jiminy technology possible now, if only someone will implement it. It's what I call the multifunction fallacy.

Ever see one of those all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/copier/modem/coffeemaker machines? They sound like a good idea -- everything your home office needs, all on one desk with one power cable and no waiting. And they certainly are, right up until a fuse goes or the cat lands on the platen, and suddenly you've lost your access to every important piece of machinery in your office. There's also, as a side effect, the Strip Club Beer problem: you don't expect the best quality beer at a strip club (even if you live in a non-prohibition country where beer and naked women are legally on offer in the same place) because the beer just isn't the point. You're there for the girly bits; the beer is incidental, and therefore not guaranteed to be much good. It's the same with all-in-one machines: it will not be a super-duper fax and a blindingly fast and reliable copier and a Porsche-standard nose-hair trimmer and all the rest. It will be an adequate fax and an acceptable printer and a good-enough modem and so on, but no more. Convenience costs. That's why a laptop costs $1000 more than a desktop machine of equivalent power. It's also why Jeff and erbo have the wrong idea about Jiminy.

Here's my ideal design. I'll call it Orac just to differentiate.

Orac is a box, a tasteful dark blue because Apple proved that you need to stake out a particular colour and make it your own, but they've got dibs on white already. It's about an inch and a half square and half an inch thick, with a funny ripple along each edge that does double duty as a distinctive trademarky sort of flavour and a good asymmetrical guide to stop you plugging bits in backwards. It contains a good fast multi-processor and some radio-frequency communications hardware, and a good-enough but not exceptional battery and memory supply. It can talk to its peripherals either by radio or by its edge connectors.

If you need more battery power, you stick it on the face: another inch-and-a-half-square box in blue with red edges. If you need more memory, it can go on the opposite face. Only batteries and memory packs go on the face; everything else goes on the edge if it needs to connect physically at all. As a bonus, batteries and memory packs include extra edge connectors -- they are, in current parlance, the Orac equivalent of USB hubs. These are the only components that do more than one job. That's the solution to the multi-function problem, right there.

To talk to the mobile phone network, plug in a phone edge connector -- sold separately, powered by Orac's internal battery or a battery pack. The phone connector only does that one thing. No address book, no games, no pretty graphics display. It's a peripheral, with no life outside the gestalt that is Orac. That's how it likes it. If it breaks down, you can get it fixed because it's simple.

To talk to networks, plug in an ethernet or wifi connector, with cables as required. To talk to other Oracs, you can get a radio boost connector, or just rely on the short-range built-in one. If you need more communications, more memory, more batteries, just plug them all in. It's like Lego.

To communicate with Orac itself, you'll need some kind of input and output. Your graphics tablet will talk by wireless to your Orac, as will your foldable portable keyboard. On your desk at home or work will be an ordinary keyboard, mouse and screen, plugged into an Orac Dock that talks by wireless or can be plugged straight in. Mostly you'll wear Orac and the most speed-intensive connectors on your belt, so whatever desk you sit down at will tune in as soon as you get close.

Orac knows about the internet. It can talk to the phone network. It speaks -- via connectors -- with GPS satellites and infra-red barcode scanners and laser printers and whatever else you want. Connectors are simple: little blue boxes with a traditional port on one face and the ubiquitous edge connectors on each edge.

Orac runs Linux, Windows or MacOS, according to the external processor you plug in. From the point of view of those operating systems, it's just another USB wifi widget. They don't notice or care that they live inside a tiny box instead of a laptop, or that all the bits and pieces that break down in ordinary hardware -- the power supply, the video card, the monitor, the disk drive -- all live in other little boxes that talk to each other by whatever means you happen to choose.

Apple makes an iPod connector for Orac. Microsoft makes a Windows box, sans peripherals, guaranteed to run Windows Vista at whatever speed BillG thinks is a fair thing. Dell makes Orac edge connectors that will burst into flames and burn down your house, because when you're on a trademarkable schtick you stick to it! The edge connector design and the protocols are open and freely copyable. No limits, no restrictions. Make peripherals and they'll work. Go wild, ye manufacturers of previously-grey boxes!

Orac should be doable with today's tech. There's no obvious reason not to do it: we already know the palmtop revolution is over; Palms and Windows Pocket PCs are an abomination, precisely because they try to do too many things. The solution is modularity, and Orac has that down cold. Now we just need a Michael Dell or (gods help us) a Steve Jobs to take the idea and run with it. I'll even give it away -- just send me a thank-you note and some free samples, and you can make all the millions you like, Steve!

Like Jeff, I expect to see this in my lifetime. I just wish it would hurry up.