I was driving yesterday when I saw one car hit another car. It immediately made me wonder why that accident couldn't trigger a series of events in a pre-determined process. The accident could send a report to the police. It could send a message to the pre-selected repair shop of the driver to schedule an appointment. It could send a message to the insurance agent. All of this could happen simply by mapping out a process, embedding rules in the process, and having it listen for a message to be sent from the car.
If this was true, then you could apply this to lots of semi-intelligent or someday to be intelligent devices - refrigerators, stoves, computers, alarm clocks, etc. An idea I toyed with about a decade ago was building out the infrastructure for an intelligent home. The idea was that everything could / should be coordinated.
- If I press snooze on my alarm clock, my coffee gets delayed.
- If I leave the house late, my first meeting gets rescheduled.
- If I run out of milk, I get an e-mail on my way home from work reminding me to stop at the grocery store.
- If I change an appointment at work, it rearranges my home calendar.
- If it is hot outside, it opens or shuts the blinds.
- If the temperature gets too hot, it adjusts the thermostat.
- If I leave the house, it turns the lights out.
- As I pull into my street, the lights go on.
- When I leave work, it begins to warm up the house.
The point here is that a process architecture that connects human centric tasks and embedded system tasks can finally make something like this happen especially when rule driven and triggered by events. It can extend into our personal lives and connect our various activities such that logical coordination can happen.
On the one hand, this is a little scary, but on the flip side, it seems like this would avoid common pitfalls that we all have which create mistakes.
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