Smart Toilets
4:07 PM, Friday afternoon. It’s gray and rainy; I’m doing my laundry and listening to The Cure, "Disintegration" -- a pretty good match for the day. I remember writing a science fiction story while continually listening to this CD. The story was cyberpunk, all darkly-gleaming with stylistic sweeps and poses. It’d be nice if it sold some day (though I suppose cyberpunk as a subgenre is a bit dated now). Other than that, I have nothing to say.
Having fixed a couple of toilets in my time (well, actually three) I can appreciate the ingenious though somewhat Rube Goldberg-ian mechanics. (Water comes in there, raising that float, pushing a lever that shuts-off the water at a certain level in anticipation of The Big Flush.) That said, there is definitely an idea that I’ve read about in several science fiction works that is simply too good not to come true at some point. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’m talking about:
Smart toilets!
First-off, you could certainly make the mechanics of your basic toilet more efficient in terms of water consumption, etc. But why stop there? Your porcelain friend could be self-sterilizing, as well as outfitted with an array of sensing and diagnostic equipment. It could notify you of a variety of medical problems, identify infections or deficiencies, refer you to a doctor should something serious be discovered. Heck, a smart toilet could probably run pregnancy tests.
"Honey, the oven says we should be cooking meals higher in beta-carotene; it’s printing up a shopping list."
"Not now dear, the toilet says I’m pregnant."
Right now you can get bathroom scales that can measure your body-fat content and track your weight over time. Smart toilets should be just around the corner. It’s an idea that’s just too good not to become reality.
(They might even remember to put the seat down all on their own...)
(And yes, I am very easily amused.)
--- JWR, 1997
EDITOR'S NOTE: The date on this entry (and on all of the "I Have Nothing To Say" entries) has been arbitrarily assigned to preserve the sequence that they were originally posted in. All were written in 1997 but, at that point, I was only identifying my journal's entries by the time at which they were written.