• by Greg Castronuovo , August 2, 2007

Three years ago I couldn't have imagined working from home and balancing dad duties. My wife travels a lot for her job, so it's important that I'm home to raise our kids. As an architect, I can telecommute to projects throughout the world. With so many ad-supported Web conferencing services out there, I can share my work with colleagues at a fraction of the cost of travel. I have most of my informal meetings in the virtual office we built as an extension of our company's intranet site. It's more secure than trying to convene in public virtual spaces like Second Life.

With so much focus on everyone's PCF (Personal Carbon Footprint) these days, I'm happy to do my part for the planet by not actually commuting anywhere. I set up my iPhone to track all my carbon emissions. It knows what kind of car I am driving and at what speeds, using Bluetooth and GPS to communicate with the car. It even finds out what size airplane I'm on when I fly and how much gas is used per passenger by synching up with the AmeriTed Web site. By the way, I can't say that airline accommodations have gotten much better since the American and United merger. Anyway, when I submit my PCF report to the government this year, I should get a nice little tax break.

With Christmas right around the corner, I can certainly use the extra cash. Santa is installing oled (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) video displays in every room in our house. Not only can I - um, Santa - just stick these 12-pound, 27-inch beauties on any wall, they wirelessly hook right into my centralized ISP service. Ever since our telephone company started offering free, ad-supported data storage, I no longer need those clunky external hard drives; I can port all of our home videos and movies onto their servers. Who knew my high-def video archive would take up so much space?

Speaking of a more clutter-free home office, wireless electricity is finally here. No more power cords! All of these new displays have the new WiTricity protocol built right in. It's not only data that can fly through the air - so can power. It's complicated, but the system, invented by M.I.T., is based on resonance associated with electromagnetic waves. The kids are going to be totally stoked about only needing to move their game controllers to play their console systems in any room. Buying a game console now is just a matter of licensing the software, and that's all housed on the centralized ISP as well.

I'm not sure how my wife feels about having displays in our bathrooms. Of course, she still thinks video displays are just glorified televisions. Perhaps she'll get it when I show her how to program each one to randomly display fine art. I'm sure she won't mind seeing Degas' "Ballet School" in high-def on the bathroom wall, and I won't mind using touch-screen PowerPoint from the bathroom so I can do my business while I do my business.

Life is getting easier as technology becomes so user-friendly. Which is great, because we already have enough to worry about with my oldest son's knee surgery. Luke is an all-state high school wrestler. He blew out his left knee in a match last month and needed arthroscopic surgery. We watched a 3D projection of his surgeon inserting instruments through small incisions in his knee to repair the damaged tissues. Luke had to miss a few days of school, but he kept up by watching live video streams of his class on the school's secure intranet site. I'm also glad we voted to put interactive white boards in every classroom a few years back. Everything the teacher wrote on the board instantly appeared on Luke's tablet pc. He was also able to participate in class from his hospital bed and from home, and he's actually more likely to speak up in class if he's connected via his webcam than when he's there in person. He may not get a wrestling scholarship now, but his grades should get him into a top-notch college.

Time to go. My wife and I have a video date. She's in Dubai, and I don't want her to nod off.

Ed. Note: This is the third installment in a series of columns taking a look into the lives of different people and how they will use technology, communications, and media in the future. In this installment, we look at family life through the eyes of a very plugged-in dad.