2005: Me turning on my computer
I wake up at 7:30 and immediately reach for my laptop. As soon as I hear the dulcet Microsoft tune signaling another beautiful day outside my window -€“ or inside my Windows XP? -€“ I am on. Online. Getting my morning fix. From my homepage, a German politics magazine, I rush to yahoo. The New York Times has sent me news: Google has $ 4 billion to spend. A friend writes the East Coast bores him. Big news. I check my second account and find a message from a digital friend: friendster.com, the networking tool that reveals our personalities on the Net. Or, as I see it, a popularity contest online.
Most of my family and friends live overseas. Thanks to the Internet we don't have to communicate at carrier pigeon pace. I check more e-Mail accounts, then weather.com. Wait, do you still step outside to feel the temperature?
After that I look up some English and Spanish words in online dictionaries. I haven't soaked up enough news yet. Thus I skim an article from a newsletter I receive daily but read only weekly. It says that Amazon now sells short stories, 49 cents apiece.
I wonder, "Is it already time to throw out my books? Where will we be in 10 years?"
2015: My computer turning on me
I wake up at 7:30. My computer is running and salutes me with my Monday playlist off iTunes. To the dismay of many, Apple has defeated Microsoft. After Apple merged with Google four years ago and released the voice-operated G10 in 2013, the conglomerate became unstoppable. Bill Gates snatched at least a temporary seat on the Goopple advisory board.
Like more than half the world's population, I am constantly online. My Internet service provider assists me a bit more these days than back in 2005. For my mother's birthday it has already sent her some present a worldwide consumer database calculated she would like.
While I prepare breakfast from ingredients ordered online, my computer reads to me my e-Mails and gives a world news update including potential consequences on me, my neighborhood and my country. Most U.S. cities are equipped with cameras that scan people's physical features and compare them to those of criminal suspects in an international database. Few question the use. Goopple's services have made life too convenient to ask.
I decide to arrange a dinner with friends sometime this week. I tell my computer whom I intend to invite. It scans their profiles for availability, food preferences and allergies. Afterwards it sends out digital invitations and gives me a list of recipes that suit both my friends' taste and my budget. My computer knows my bank account better than I do. After the 19th dish suggestion: silence. It's the first disconnection since 2010. Time to pick up a book.
I really like the creativity of this approach and it gets us into the topic for next week about how this generation gets the news. I am, however, puzzled by the ending. Say whaaat? It's kind of like "Then I woke up from the dream." Or "Then he died and the story is over." The end doesn't work as well as the rest of it.