This TV Everywhere that’s popping up, well, everywhere, is a great idea. At least I think so, but then I’m a frequent flier, the windshield warrior, as they say. I spend more time in hotels, airports and, sad but true, restaurants dining alone where a good shot of television would be just the thing the boredom doctor ordered.

For me, TV Everywhere would go everywhere. But, as I say, I’m not a normal person when it comes to being in too many places at too many times. The average American cable subscriber—or telco subscriber, to be fair, those guys are into this as well—doesn’t get around as much. While TV Everywhere and the fun of being connected is no doubt an interesting novelty, it’s not up there with a phone number that follows you or a high-speed Internet connection that continues to work when you leave your modem behind.

That’s what got me thinking about the next phase of TV Everywhere. I call it Everything Everywhere—I know, I’m pushing it, the service providers are just rolling out TV Everywhere but what the hee haw, I’m allowed.

Anyway, Everything Everywhere would be just that; everything a cable subscriber could want that the cable operator has (and that’s basically everything these days) all part of a bundled package that can be carried to the car, the hotel, the beach, the park and everywhere but the movie theater where really, you should be watching the movie not looking at Everything Everywhere.

The concept is simple because it’s based on the idea that everything can be stored in the cloud. Access is relatively simple, too. You sign up for cable service and you get the option of Everything Everywhere. The details, of course, have to be worked out, but that’s for the detail people; I’m thinking big here, I’m taking things to the limit, I’m… OK, I’m dreaming of a time in the future, hopefully the near future, when connectivity will be everywhere and the keys will be in the hands of the subscriber who’s bought the lock from his cable operator.

Everything Everywhere. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Those who know me or who think they know me because they’ve been following this space know that I’m not a fan of boxes. My theory is, if there’s already a box that does the job, then you don’t need a second box to do it as well. If you have a set-top box that works the TV or the satellite or the telco video system, that’s enough. You don’t need another one to do another application; make the first one do the job or, better yet, outsource the job to the cloud.

A box, after all, is just a box. And more often than not you don’t need another one.

Maintaining a strict stance on any subject, however, runs the risk of boxing a person in so I’ve always said that there might be room for another box under certain conditions. Those conditions have been met by a box being developed in India that will go for $35 — a tablet, to be exact, but that doesn’t fit well with the train of this thought. This is no ordinary box (tablet); it’s a cloud-connected computer that can bring the wonders of the Internet to the masses without the need for a bigger box full of applications no one needs.

The idea is genius. It’s being promoted by the Indian government, which hopes to eventually bring the price down to $10, as a way to get broadband connectivity and online learning into the hands of everyone. Without advertising it, the new tablet cuts all the corners. It’ll be Linux-based with touch screen, no hard drive, storage based on memory cards and a solar cell option to charge it up.

What charges me up is the thought of empowering more people to connect to the vast amounts of information in the cloud. Gone are the days of having to purchase a library of CDs that contain your electronic encyclopedia (sorry Encarta, nothing personal). It is, in short, a box with a plan. So, in this case, I’ll make an exception to my rule. I don’t like boxes—unless those boxes do something that needs to be done. Bringing Internet to the masses at a reasonable price and making the best use of the cloud is something that needs to be done.

The Internet’s ability to untether people has really changed the whole dynamic around what is entertainment and what is necessary and what is not.

While the TV Everywhere initiative pushes video entertainment out of the living room and into roving devices like laptops, PCs and mobile phones, it expands the video entertainment experience. To take it one step further, with what I’ll call People Everywhere, today’s technology, with slight modifications, can push content out to users everywhere and at the same time pull user information that can be used later.

The idea behind People Everywhere is to place existing technology—or stuff yet to be developed—into a device that is carried everywhere. While that sounds like a smartphone, to paraphrase Brian Roberts, it should be a smartphone on steroids. This always-on device would not only keep track of the user’s location but would store that information in a cloud-based file for later retrieval. If the user went to the local mall, the device would know what store and even what department; a sports store and the tennis department, for instance.

On the surface this whole thing does sound somewhat intrusive and creepy. What makes People Everywhere a winning concept is that the user can take that same device and control how information retrieved during the day is presented in its most useful fashion all accessed from a device that might have its own screen but also might, through the wonders of technology, transform into a remote control or mouse that connects to yet another screen. Turn on the TV at home or in the hotel and get an ad not for Slazenger golf balls but rather for Slazenger tennis equipment because you’d been searching the tennis department. Turn on the PC and find not an annoying ribbon for the local car dealer but a more pleasing visage of the latest line of Izod tennis shorts.

People Everywhere is a concept that’s a ways out—but it’s not science fiction. People like Intel are working feverishly on smart remote controls that recognize and sense consumers; cable operators are TV Everywhere outside the normal home entertainment center; every mobile phone knows where you are; and motion detection is a video game must. Put them all together in one small package, connected, of course, to the cloud and you have People Everywhere; an idea waiting to be born.