Shopping in 2030

I wake up to the sound of my phone buzzing. I have a new notification. ‘Reminder: Alumni meet today.’

Damn, how could I have forgotten the most important event of the year for every girl? A single platform to flaunt your latest size zero figure, your expensive designer outfit, your Gucci’s, your Prada’s, your Jimmy Choo’s and your recent promotion to corporate Vice President. You want to be the envy of every other girl out there, who by the way, is looking to do the same. 

Even though I have a perfectly stocked versatile wardrobe, nothing seems good enough for tonight. I quickly instruct my laptop to switch on; of course it recognizes my voice very well. It springs to life almost instantaneously. 

In this age of electronic cash, all your purchases are made by a single card with a single identity worldwide and webwide. There is a single login ID for every site – your UIDAI number! So eBay knows that you bought a Louis Vuitton from Singapore last month and Flipkart knows that you bought a tee shirt from the store next door last Saturday. More importantly, your purchases over the last decade are no secret! So whenever you login, the stuff that you are most likely to pick is displayed right on top based on your recent purchases from both brick & mortar and online store, worldwide.

So I login to eBay and quickly choose a few outfits. Now I need to decide what looks best on me before I leave for work. How, you ask. With their Virtual trial experience J A 3D representation of the outfit emanates from the screen and you can position yourself in front of the laptop so it looks like you’re wearing the dress. I look at myself on the webcam and I decide that the colour is too dull for me. I pick another outfit and it looks wonderful. 

I purchase it immediately, lest someone else picks it up before I do. It will be delivered by evening. After work, I get dressed and pick out matching accessories. I can’t wait to see everyone’s reaction at the reunion. 

I hear my phone buzzing again. Wait, this time it’s the alarm. It’s 7 am and it’s only 2013! Guess I got confused between thirteen and thirty in my sleep… Right now, the only single identity we have is to login to any site using our Facebook accounts! :D And sssh... no one knows that I splurged on that designer gown even though it was not on sale.. ;)

Status messages.. on your phone?

If you check my inbox/outbox during term time, most of the messages would be.. "Wru?".. "Give me another ten mins, I'll see you at your residence then.." and most importantly.. "Lunch?".."Dinner?".. Haha.. And especially if ten of you are going out for dinner from one place, like pgp, and you decide to meet at one place at a particular time, you have to message and ask each one why they aren't there yet. Lots of people may end up messaging one person, and on the other hand, someone may be left out! Haha.. haven't we experienced this before?

Given such scenarios, wouldn't it be really wonderful if we could have status messages on our phones just like we have on facebook? You can choose to display your message to one, a few, or your entire contact list if you want. And you can check the latest messages on the "Status updates" section, just like facebook. [Have I been facebooking too much? :)]

Then, in the given example of going out as a gang, you could set your status message to just those ten people as "CS is ready and is waiting at the foyer".. lol.. and if someone is late, they could write "X is almost done, will be there in 5 mins..".. Or if you decide to meet at the back gate instead of the foyer, just display it! :P It seems weird, but it is a great idea! Sometimes everyone is busy and you don't have company for lunch, you could just check your phone and see if someone you know is lunching somwhere and you could join them! But what if that person doesn't wanna have lunch with you? Well, in that case, that person would have selected you to be able to see his/her status message! Even during exam time, if you are studying in the library and you want a break, and you don't know who else is studying in the library [given that it is so huge!], you could easily set your status asking your friends if they are in the library and if they wanna go for a walk! Or if you're going to mustafa, you can tell a select few of your friends and ask them if they want anything!

Enough examples, you get the drift! I don't know if it's stupid, but it's just something I think about in certain situations.. and how helpful it would be.. This reminds me of the !dea tag line.. An idea can change your life!