Good morning! The coffee maker has checked the schedule and starts perking at 6:00 a.m. Luckily, the refrigerator noted the expiration date on the milk carton and had more delivered. The mirror over the bathroom sink gives Mom the morning headlines while she brushes her teeth. After getting dressed, Dad enters an appointment on his palmtop controller, which is synchronized with a small computer woven into his sport jacket. Later, when he heads to the appointment, his car's computer will load his destination from the jacket, look it up on the Internet and call out directions as he drives, monitoring road conditions for traffic jams.

Sound odd? Maybe, but not for long, because the next revolution in technology, which some are calling "pervasive computing," isn't for hackers and geeks. It's more likely to show up in Internet dishwashers and Web-surfing family sedans. Indeed, computer specialists everywhere are chanting a common mantra: "Computers in everything. Everything connected to the Net." It's a combination that could change our lives.

The infrastructure is still evolving, but the vision is well drawn. Your home, for instance, will probably have one or more items directly wired to the Internet: a set-top television box, a game console, a server sitting in the basement.

These could be the jumping-off points for a tiny radio-frequency net that broadcasts throughout the house. That way the Internet could be literally in the air. Stuff inside the house could be relevant bits. Your alarm clock might ring later than usual if it logs on to find out that you don't have to get the kids ready for school...snow day! Your dishwasher's Internet connection will be used to contact the manufacturer if something goes wrong. By examining diagnostic chips in the machine, the company might even fix it remotely.

This vision assumes that functions that have been customarily performed by a PC--Web surfing, scheduling, note-taking--will be handled by specialized information appliances that can simplify our lives. The guru of the "humane" computing movement, Don Norman, author of "The Invisible Computer",says that information absorbed by appliances should be able to move between devices with ease. Current appliances have difficulty doing this. But if we adopt a lingua franca that enables devices to freely swap information, then all our electronic books and Internet phones and handheld organizers become much more valuable and easier to use. Though zillions of devices will be grabbing information and zapping stuff to other devices, the technoids insist it will all work smoothly.

There are no guarantees here, but pervasive computing proselytizers offer compelling reasons why their vision is more than a fat pipe dream.

It's simple. Don Norman believes computing is about to undergo a transformation similar to that of electric motors. Originally, motors were sold separately from attachments like mixers, fans and sewing machines, but eventually they became invisible to users.

It's cheap. Right now, all our devices are loaded with their own controls and interfaces, making them expensive. "But if you took, say, a VCR, ripped out those expensive buttons and knobs in the front and put a network interface on the back, you could control it with a Web browser," says David Clark, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Getting devices networked makes them cheaper, and anything that's cheaper is inevitable."

It's reliable. Bill Joy, chief designer of Sun Microsystems' Jini language, which aspires to be the aforementioned lingua franca, compares PC reliability with that of the airplane. It's not unusual when your computer crashed and wipes out your tax records. But plane accidents are intolerable, triggering investigations and often resulting in changes to the system. "That's the standard we should aim for," Joy says.

Most, however, would settle for the level of reliability of stereo sets, where the expectation of things working as they should is almost always satisfied. That's the promise of pervasiveness, where the complexity of the PC is eliminated, computer chips replace less-relaible mechanical processes, and Internet diagnoses will supposedly fix things even before they're broken.

When can this vision be realized? Pundits estimate five to ten years before the new technologies become commonplace and various groups agree on common standards. But pieces of the vision fall into place almost daily.

Frigidaire's Internet Refrigerator, for example, can tell when food supplies get low and order more from the supermarket. Matsushita's smart toilet analyzes samples and ships the data to health care providers. A company called emWare has developed software for a sprinkler system that checks out weather reports so it won't spritz during a downpour. The auto industry is developing microprocessors that determine when, for example, a car's alternator is about to burn out, then post e-mail to find the nearest service station that stocks a replacement.

Whatever the speed and shape of pervasive computing, the hope is that it will keep its main promise: integrating computers and the Internet so seamlessly into devices that we'll forget what's inside them. Instead, we'll concentrate on the tasks we want to perform in the first place.