In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o’clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness.
Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!
In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.
“Today is August 4, 2026,” said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling. It repeated the date three times for memory’s sake. “Today is Mr. Featherstone’s birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita’s marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills.
Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes…
This glimpse of the future is from Ray Bradbury’s excellent short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains.” He dreamed of a fully automated home that would not only cook you breakfast and keep your appointments, but also clean your home and even entertain your children.
Though his story was written way back in 1950, his predictions — while controversial at the time — were spot on.
But while Bradbury thought such futuristic luxuries wouldn’t happen until 2026, they’ve arrived over a decade earlier.
That’s in part because Bradbury had no way to predict the awesome power of a certain company called Google…
Google has just entered the automated housing market with its acquisition of Nest — a four-year-old startup that manufactures smart thermostats and smoke detectors.
It paid a whopping $3 billion to do so… the second largest acquisition in Google’s history, following the $12.5 billion it spent to scoop up Motorola Mobility.
Nest was founded in 2010 by two former Apple employees, Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, who both played a huge part in creating and launching the iPod, which completely turned Apple around and ushered in its current era of massive profits.
While Nest may not make you breakfast (yet), it does offer Google the chance to connect homeowners with their homes in totally new and exciting ways.
It’s the first thermostat that actually knows you. Just like Google knows your Internet search history, Nest knows your heating and cooling habits.
In fact, it knows whether you are home and how many people you have visiting. The Nest thermostat actually tracks your usage and adjusts your energy settings accordingly — not only to keep you comfortable, but also to conserve electricity and save you money.
It can save the average homeowner 10% a year on electricity bills. And this is no namby-pamby luxury item for eccentric wealthy people. Smart thermostats are slated to become a $1.4 billion industry by 2020.
Nest has also branched out into other “smart home” products. It offers a smart smoke and carbon monoxide detector — the “Nest Protect” —with the tagline, “Safety doesn’t have to be annoying.”
Instead of the horrible, ear-splitting shrieks that have led so many of us to disconnect our smoke detectors entirely, the Nest smoke detector cautions you in a soothing female voice: “There’s smoke in the kitchen.”
So if you’ve simply burned some toast, you can forget about frantically flopping a towel by your smoke alarm; you can shut off the warning with a quick wave of your hand.
But while Nest is a strong acquisition, we think Google’s other projects are even more forward thinking… and have the highest profit potential.
3-2-1 Contact
Google’s newest project is lifted straight out of RoboCop. It just unveiled its “smart contact lens.”
These lenses are equipped with sensors “so small they look like bits of glitter.” Each speck is packed with thousands of transistors, and the lens boasts an antenna no bigger than a solitary piece of human hair.
But this is no techno-dweeb novelty item…
Unlike RoboCop, the Google contact won’t scan the horizon for danger, give you X-ray vision, or allow you to record your surroundings by touching your temple. Google is aiming for a market far bigger than novel peripheries: the biotech market.
The Google contact is for the 400 million diabetic patients around the world.
Most diabetics are forced to check their glucose levels regularly by pricking their fingers and drawing blood. This is a painful and obnoxious process that plagues diabetics day in and day out. The majority of these people would happily pay for a more comfortable alternative.
With the Google contact, diabetics could simply wear the lens and allow it to measure their glucose levels with their tears — not their blood. Plus, the device can take a reading every second of the day!
Diabetes is one of the most prevalent health issues in the world, and my guess is that most patients would love to spare their fingers the pain of puncturing them several times a day.
Robot Chauffeurs
Perhaps the most “futuristic” of all of Google’s projects is the self-driving car…
These robot cars will be hitting the roads sooner than you’d probably think. A new automotive study predicts 54 million robot cars on the streets by 2035. But by 2050, almost every car on the road will be self-driving.
The ramifications cannot be overstated. For one, people are terrible drivers; I can’t make it through a morning commute without some insane driver weaving between lanes while swilling a cup of coffee, flipping through radio stations, and furiously texting away on a smartphone.
Hell, simply ending the scourge of rubberneckers would be enough of an argument for me…
All told, human drivers account for 5.5 million accidents annually in the United States alone. They have killed 33,000 people a year and injured another 2 million.
The total financial cost is in the range of $450 billion a year.
Needless to say, there must be a better solution… and Google is banking on it.
Google X — the company’s lair for experimental technology — has been at the forefront of this technology. Google has been testing self-driving cars on our roads since 2010. Its driver-less cars have logged over 300,000 miles without an accident to speak of.
The vehicles come equipped with a series of sensors that meticulously monitor the car’s performance and take inventory of the other cars on the road. Roof sensors monitor vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications to keep traffic cruising safely and smoothly. Radar sensors automatically detect oncoming traffic to prevent rear-end collisions. Adaptive cruise control automatically adjusts your speed.
“We want to fundamentally change the world with this,” declared Sergey Brinm, co-founder of Google.
Brinm predicts that ordinary folks like you and me will be able to secure our robot chauffeurs within five years.
The Next Google
Google is clearly thinking far beyond search advertising…
Smart homes, cyborg eye-implants, and robot cars have long been fodder for far-out science fiction writers. But it looks like the future is finally taking shape.
“Like any moonshot, you have to think of time as a factor,” remarked Andy Rubin, Google’s head robotics engineer. “We need enough runway and a 10-year vision.”
A company with Google’s cash reserves and market certainly has enough runway… and time is on its side.
Full disclosure: I am long Google. I bought it years ago when it was under $400, and I have added to the position each year since. But right now, I think it may be riding too high to make any serious gains in the next year or two. In fact, I bet it will pull back and create a better buying opportunity.
It simply has too many balls in the air and is bound to drop at least one…
Perhaps more importantly, there are a slew of future-based tech plays that hold way more profit potential than the mighty Google.
For all things “futuristic,” I defer to my college Christian DeHaemer and his Technology and Opportunity letter. He’s made his readers triple digit gains on all of the industries we discussed today: smart energy, biotech, and robotics.
And his next play is locked, loaded, and ready to blow those out of the water…
