Last month I happened to be reading a book of short stories by the "grand master" of science fiction, Isaac Asimov. I'm not one of those who lives for Asimov's books (although I do like them) but something in this particular one (Magic -- published after his death) made me smile.

Asimov was speculating in an essay (titled, like the book itself, "Magic") on the old quote by Arthur Clarke about how sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic. Asimov's particular question in his essay was whether the reverse is true: whether magic is necessarily indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology. His position was that magic is actually quite different from even the most advanced technology but I won't get into that right now.

All this stuck in my mind because of one of the examples he used in the course of the article. He suggested that the magically-opening mountain wall in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (you know, the "Open Sesame!" one) could be explained as magic or as a "sufficiently advanced technology": a computer-controlled, password-protected, automatic door.

Asimov dates himself here though. In describing such a device, he first assumes that the password for the door would be typed into a computer keyboard. Can you imagine Ali Baba sneaking into your office, just after you leave and staring blankly at your keyboard, not able to enter his "Open Sesame!" command and gain access to all your hidden treasures?

In fact, these days, you don't even need a computer to create the system Asimov described. At any hardware store you can buy electric door locks for your house with a keypad built in. They won't open the door for you, but they will unlock it.

But Asimov wasn't blind to the future; in an impressive display of intuition he went a little further than just the keyboard password example:

Indeed, the time may well come when such a computer may be designed to respond to the spoken command. In that case, it is inevitable that some jokester will have the computer open the door at the command "Open Sesame!"

A computer may be designed to respond only to the typical sound pattern of a particular voice and then only you may open the door, even if the whole world knows the code word.

(This also made me a bit sad. Asimov died in 1992, a few years before the first commercially available operating system with built-in voice control was released, so he never got to see how close he really was to the future he was imagining. The article was written in 1985.)

Asimov's article and something in our current issue gave me an idea. This month's Beta File includes details of a beta test for a new PM-based home automation system (it controls standard -- and inexpensive -- X10 CP290 hardware to turn lights, TVs, etc. on and off). This started me thinking: if I could just find some sort of suitable automatic door opener (not just a lock, but an opener -- I've got to go all the way!) and plug it into an X10 outlet, I could use Warp 4's voice recognition to watch out the window of my office, opening and closing the front door for people as they approach. I bet that's not what IBM had in mind when they developed VoiceType. <g>

My idea for an 'Ali Baba door' may never happen though. After all, I learn from other people's mistakes. I don't want to return to my hideout some day and find that some mischievous modern-day Ali Baba has discovered my secret password and made off with all my treasures -- including my voice-understanding, door-opening computer itself! And I'm not sure my insurance agent would cover that sort of break in.

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