Until recently, my plant and I didn't have much to say to one another.
In fact, we had nothing. I didn't talk to the vegetation and it, most certainly, didn't talk to me.
But now my little croton has let me in - informing me, delighting me, even almost pestering me with frequent updates on her health, happiness and general well-being. Maybe it's got something to do with sitting next to a computer all these years, but the plant is reaching me online, with short, sweet messages sent through the cutting-edge social network Twitter.
"Water me, please," she asked me late one week.
Hurrying home to enjoy the weekend, I didn't check my messages.
Over the weekend she tried again: "URGENT!" she seemed to yelp in a message, clearly hoping either the all-caps or the emergency punctuation would get my attention. "Water me!"
Alas, no love from me until Monday morning when I finally noticed the desperate cries for attention. Feeling awful, I hurried over with a big cup of water. As I poured it slowly into the pot, the parched soil sucked up every drop.
By the time I got back to my keyboard, she'd sent another message: "Thank you for watering me!"
The technology that enables humans and houseplants to take their relationships to the next level comes from a company called Botanicalls, which sells $99 kits for just that purpose.
It's not only a nifty gadget charming wonks and gardeners alike. Botanicalls, some say, is indicative of the next wave in commercial technology, devices that allow us to interact not just with each other, but with our homes, our pets, our possessions.
"I see all technology going in this direction," says Shawn Van Every, who teaches a course at New York University called Redial, which explores new ways to use the telephone.
He sees vast mass market potential for the idea - in the toy industry, where a plaything could exist in both the real and virtual worlds, or in mobile phones, where people could call home to check on their refrigerator or their dog.
Botanicalls is the brainchild of three students in NYU's interactive telecommunications program, a two-year graduate program in the school's arts department nicknamed by some "the center for the study of the recently possible."
The idea hatched during a quirky conversation. Some of the students were sitting around in their New York office, wistfully missing nature. Someone mentioned getting some plants. Someone else pointed out that no one would remember to water them and they'd die.
