Ideo-Blob

Imagine a large volume of gel (at least a cubic metre) inside a membrane. The gel is riddled with narrow but flexible tubes whose lining is capable of electronically controlled peristalsis.

You can push mnemonic objects of various shapes and sizes into the network of tubes through orifices in the membrane. Then, you use that membrane like a touch-screen to control the positioning of those objects within the gel.

In this way, you build three-dimensional mind-maps out of real objects.

When you leave them in there, they move.

Some of them are moving because you have specified, through a conventional computer interface, that they should draw attention to themselves. These might oscillate or dance a bit.

Others are moving because they are simply reflecting the passage of time so that, in the blob, your deadlines physically loom towards you out of the gel until they fall on your carpet with an angry belch.

If all the things you have to do are imposed on you by others, then you would be better off with existing personal organisation technologies. The blob comes into its own for people trying to pursue self-imposed tasks, especially tasks which require creative inspiration.

The blob allows you to use the proustian power of physical objects to remind you, not just of facts, but of why you care about them. It therefore combines organisation with self-motivation through sympathetic magic (that's an anthropological term, not the [m-f-d] kind of magic).

Supplementary thoughts:

1. Maybe it could supplement its power supply by grazing on and digesting household rubbish through an orifice in its underside.

2. The same mechanism which performs peristalsis on the internal tubes could also be made available at the external membrane, to give head massages.

3. Optional custard interface; it performs no known function, but some evidence suggests it may attract croissants.

4. The apparatus would require cleaning, so as not to attract transparent cockroaches.