THE FUTURE OF FLUSHING/FLUSHING THE FUTURE:

Japanese Masters Get Closer to the Toilet Nirvana (JAMES BROOKE, October 8, 2002, NY Times)

Japan's toilet wars started in February, when Matsushita engineers here unveiled a toilet seat equipped with electrodes that send a mild electric charge through the user's buttocks, yielding a digital measurement of body-fat ratio.

Unimpressed, engineers from a rival company, Inax, counterattacked in April with a toilet that glows in the dark and whirs up its lid after an infrared sensor detects a human being. When in use, the toilet plays any of six soundtracks, including chirping birds, rushing water, tinkling wind chimes, or the strumming of a traditional Japanese harp. [...]

[I]n a country with the demographics of Florida, the real growth will be medical toilets linked to the Internet.

"You may think a toilet is just a toilet, but we would like to make a toilet a home health measuring center," Mr. Matsui, the Matsushita engineer, said in a lecture here in Nara, near Osaka. "We are going to install in a toilet devices to measure weight, fat, blood pressure, heart beat, urine sugar, albumin and blood in urine."

The results would be sent from the toilet to a doctor by an Internet-capable cellular phone built into the toilet. Through long-distance monitoring, doctors could chart a person's physical well-being.

"We will have this within five years or so," said Harry Terai, director of home appliances research for Matsushita.

With nursing homes largely full in Japan, the number of older people under home care is rising fast, jumping by nearly one quarter just last year.

"In Japan, most people see the doctor after they become ill," said Hironori Yamazaki, a Toto engineer. "With an eye to our demographic change, we are setting out to make the toilet a space for the early discovery of disease."

The story is pretty funny, but hidden within is one of our themes here. That phrase, "a country with the demographics of Florida", should terrify the Japanese. Instead, they're trying to make a smarter jacks. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 8, 2002 6:46 PM