Leading on from the manifestos of headmap and the visionaries of science fiction (William Gibson, Vernor Vinge and more recently Cory Doctorow's bionically networked near futurism), everyone wants to build the Outernet - ubiquitous Wi-Fi, portable communication devices and location awareness have already combined to make possible such delights as GPS Hide-and-Seek and GPS Hunt-the-Thimble (the latter reminds me of Bill Drummond's experiments with Richard Long's artworks in his situationist autobiography 45, but that's another story).
While accepting that we can never fulfill the extropian fantasies of the 20th century, elegantly deconstructed by Erik Davis in Techgnosis, can we still integrate the Matrix into our everyday lives? Awash in unfiltered information, our vision seems to be the only sensory input that we could focus enough to block out the noise. However, I'm not going to be wearing an NHS-approved HUD anytime soon. Without bionic brain implants, directing this information to individuals will therefore have to involve the mediation services of hardware and software - mobile phones (with their built-in tracking systems), iPods and PDAs combining sound and vision to bring us the information bath we've always wanted. Celestial jukeboxes, distributed file storage, location-targeted information and endless opportunities for communication networks can all become commonplace reality.
I'd like to compile a list of the innovations and applications that are available now (or in the near future) - but they must actually work. If anyone has any suggestions, send them this way.