The Flush of the Future

It's bad enough when one's doctor informs one that one is overweight or in some way diseased. The British have decided to add insult to injury by passing that job off to one's toilet. The toilet can then take the liberty of informing your supermarket what foods they should sell to you to correct the problem(s). You think I'm joking, don't you? I'm not. I'm totally serious. The Twyford VIP not only analyzes waste to determine a person's health, but it can be adjusted (much like a car seat) using either push buttons or voice recognition. Again, you think I'm joking, don't you? I'm not.

As one commentator put it: "Physical output becomes digital input in this transformation of waste into metadata. Sensors are coming to a loo near you. And this strange business of sensory cyberspace imports has just begun. We can hardly imagine all the weird and wonderful possibilities." Morville, Peter. Ambient Functionality (Sebastopol, CA: O'Rielly, 2005), 90.