It's Friday morning in the year 2025, and you're running late. You got distracted watching the music video that as playing in the corner of your bathroom mirror while you were brushing your teeth. How will you get to your office at Mega Giga Industries on time?

　　A quick check of your Internet-connected refrigerator magnet tells you your train which travels at speeds up to 250 miles an hour as it electromagnetically hovers above its guide track—is a bit behind schedule, too. So you decide to drive your environmentally-friendly hydrogen fuel cell car instead—or rather, let your car drive you. It's programmed to know the way, and it will get you there without speeding, getting lost, or crashing.

　　Settling into your office chair, which changes color to match what you're wearing, you pick up yesterday morning's newspaper. Printed on reusable electronic paper, it instantly rewrites itself with today's headlines. Now it's time for your big meeting. Uh-oh! You've left your handwritten notes at home. No problem. The digital ink pen you used has stored an electronic copy of what you wrote.

　　Your wristwatch videophone suddenly rings. Your best friend's face pops up on the organic light-emitting diode screen asking what you're doing this weekend. Will you slap on your 3-D contact lenses and play virtual soccer with the U.S. Olympic team? No, no. Your friend says, so you have to take the new nanotube elevator (made of microscopic fibers many times stronger than steel) 60,000 miles into space.

　　Could this scene really take place in just a couple of decades? The researchers who are currently developing all this stuff think so. These gadgets may be as common in 20 years as cell phones and DVD players are today.