It’s been more than 30 years since my favorite American bard, John Prine, sang that lyric, and it came to mind as I sat down today to meet with Brian David Johnson, who is, to my recollection, the first person I’ve ever known to carry the job title “futurist.” And yes, it sounds a little specious, until you find out he works as a futurist for the chipmaker Intel, which certainly has a long-term strategic interest in anticipating the demands of the future well before they happen.

Johnson was a guest today on The Wall Street Journal’s “Digits” program, which I co-hosted with the Journal’s affable Simon Constable. Johnson is in New York to speak at Comic Con about Intel’s Tomorrow Project, which aims to ask honestly what computing may be like 15 or 20 years from now — and the implications for our daily lives.

Think back to 1996 and you probably had some idea of what 2011 would be like. But did you really? You may have had a cellphone, but would you have imagined how much of your daily life would be punctuated by its use, beyond making phone calls? If you were to zap back in time and have a conversation with the 1996 you about life in 2011, you’d probably have to rely on science fiction to get the point across. “You know the communicator and tricorder from ‘Star Trek’? Yeah, we basically have those. We call them smartphones, and they’re kind of a big deal,” the 2011 you might say. “And they’re also the talking computers from ‘Star Trek.’ And you won’t believe who makes them.”

Science fiction makes it possible, Johnson says, to have a conversation about the future, by giving us the metaphors we need to figure out what we want and don’t want to happen. Hence “The Tomorrow Project Anthology,” a collection of short stories set in the future, imagining plausible situations emerging from science fact of today. One volume of the anthology was published earlier this year, and a new one is out now.

What happens, on some hypothetical day in the future, when passwords are easily and readily hackable and all our personal information is more or less available for all the world to see and take and use? That’s what the writer Cory Doctorow asks in his story, “The Knights of the Rainbow Table,” which appears in the new volume.

So these are some of the things that Simon and I talked about with Johnson in today’s closing segment on “Digits,” which you can see below. Enjoy.

*Lyrics from “Living in the Future,” by John Prine, from the 1980 album “Storm Windows.”

With HP set to report quarterly earnings tomorrow, sources familiar with the matter tell AllThingsD that TouchPad sales are failing yet another critical test: Sales at big-box consumer electronics retailer Best Buy.

According to one source who has seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory.

A second person who has seen Best Buy’s TouchPad sales figures confirmed the results as “consistent with what I’ve seen,” and went so far as to say that 25,000 sold might be “charitable.” This source suggested that the 25,000-unit sales number may not account for units that consumers return to stores for a refund.

Best Buy, sources tell us, is so unhappy that it has told HP it is unwilling to pay for all the TouchPads taking up expensive space in its stores and warehouses, and wants HP to take them back. HP, for its part, is pleading with Best Buy to be patient. We’re also told that a senior HP executive, possibly executive VP Todd Bradley, is slated to travel to Minneapolis soon to discuss the matter with Best Buy executives.

These numbers are emerging just one day before HP is set to report quarterly earnings. While it’s possible that HP will choose not to disclose any unit-sales results for the TouchPad — because as yet they’re unlikely to be large enough to be material — if it does report anything on the subject, that will probably be a figure known in industry circles as “channel sales,” which are the number of units sold to stores like Best Buy and Costco. Channel sales don’t reflect sales to end customers, known as “sell-through.”

HP declined to comment, as did Best Buy.

There’s more. TouchPad sales aren’t only failing to catch on at Best Buy, but also at other retailers, including Wal-Mart, Micro Center and Fry’s, says analyst Rich Doherty, head of the Envisioneering Group. Doherty says that spot interviews at stores on both coasts show that HP’s “wildcat pricing moves” on the TouchPad have prompted consumers to wait and see what happens in the next few months.

“After the initial surge of interest after the July release, all those price promotions have caused consumers interested in buying a TouchPad to pause, because they think the price is going to fall further,” Doherty told me.

For the record, the TouchPad costs $399.99 for the 16GB model and $499.99 for the 32GB version. Both started at prices exactly $100 higher when first announced in June.

So what’s HP’s next move? Doherty says that with the back-to-school PC buying season underway, HP will likely use its leverage as one of Best Buy’s top suppliers — the other is Samsung — to offer bundle deals: Buy an HP computer, get the TouchPad for a special price.

“Who’s the guy everyone’s taking pictures of?”

“What?” I answered. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.

“Who’s that guy over there? Everyone is taking his picture.”

“Oh, that’s Mike Lazaridis. He invented the BlackBerry,” I said.

It seemed a strange kind of question, given that it was RIM’s launch party, but it was a strange kind of night. Early on, word circulated that there would be no formal remarks from RIM execs about the product, and no chance for the assembled press to ask questions. The two CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Lazaridis, walked around and talked with people informally.

The usual gang of New York tech reporters were there. But so were others whose roles I couldn’t quite figure out. There was the basketball player Dwight Howard who, at 6 feet and 11 inches, towered above the fray and posed for pictures with “Entertainment Tonight” host Nancy O’Dell. (Though–like the fellow who didn’t recognize Lazaridis–I didn’t recognize either one and had to ask.) Howard later tweeted about the party–from an app running on an iPhone, no less. Oops.

Circulating, I talked with Balsillie about QNX, the operating system company that RIM acquired last year from Harman International, which is the basis of the PlayBook’s operating system. I remember meeting with QNX–pronounced CUE-nix–way back in 2001 when there was a sudden surge in interest in real-time operating systems for use in cars. Since then it has been widely adopted by the likes of Chrysler, Audi, BMW, GM, and Acura, to name a few.

Given that lineage, I told Balsillie that at the time that RIM bought it, I had been confused by RIM’s interest in QNX. “It’s got the chops to do a lot,” he said. He then proceeded to run down a long list of other things it does. GE also uses it to run turbines in nuclear power plants. Caterpillar uses it to control equipment used in coal and copper mines. The U.S. Postal Service uses it to sort letters. It’s also the operating system on Cisco Systems’ most power router, the CRS-1. “It’s got some serious chops,” he said again. “But sell a few million Playbooks and it’ll dwarf all those other things.”

I asked him if he’ll ever try to buy another hockey team. He’s tried a few times before, but the deals have, for one reason or another, never worked out. He laughed, and shook his head, very definitively. “No. No. Never again.”

At that, I shook his hand, and circulated again around the party and soon found myself chatting with Lazaridis, (pictured here during his interview at last year’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference) who began demonstrating the PlayBook. A group quickly gelled around a table to watch. Ever the engineer, he took particular pride in the device’s display capabilities, its light sensor that adjusts the brightness of the screen based on the level of ambient light in the room, its internal camera, and all the video formats it supports. He wanted to demonstrate Web video but was having trouble getting access to the Wi-Fi network in the room, apparently overwhelmed by all the other PlayBooks being demonstrated nearby. From my pocket I produced my Verizon MiFi and offered to let him use it. “Sure, why not?” he said. “Is it LTE?” No, but it would do.

Lazaridis was clearly having a good time showing off the device, seeming a bit like a father taking his two-year-old to the office to meet the co-workers. Despite the generally negative reviews–including one by ATD’s Walt Mossberg–that were published earlier in the day, he got people genuinely interested in the PlayBook. Peppered with questions about how the various wireless carriers will or won’t support tethering plans on the PlayBook, he said he didn’t know. He just wanted to show what it could do, and that was what was most important to him.

I’ve interviewed Lazaridis numerous times over the years. My perception is that he’s a lot more comfortable talking with people one on one or in small groups than he is on a stage with glaring lights or with cameras pointed at him. And though no one would say it, it was also pretty clear that his unfortunate meltdown during a BBC interview played a big part in the last-minute decision to cancel the press conference portion of the launch event. The result was, in the end, an example of what has become one of RIM’s biggest problems of late: a muddled and imprecise message in the face of nothing but clarity from its biggest rival, Apple. This launch event did little to dispel the perception that the PlayBook is anything more than the latest round of cannon fodder to march against an ever-strengthening iPad juggernaut.

“There are so many great things about this product, so many things it can do, once people get it in their hands, they’re just going to love it,” Lazaridis said at one point during his enthusiastic demonstration. If only it were that easy.

Today, however, was about the Atom chip, the other chip on which Intel has pinned such hopes yet seen little payoff as yet. The company announced that the latest version of the Atom, known till now under the codename Oak Trail, is available beginning today.

The new chip is about 60 percent smaller, meaning it consumes less power than its predecessor to get the same level of computing work accomplished. Intel says it will be capable of delivering “all day” battery life in tablets and allow for a fanless design in small notebook PCs, meaning those devices will be both cooler and quieter. Intel has also added a feature called Deeper Sleep that conserves power during periods of inactivity.

And as is often the case when Intel debuts a new chip, it also points toward the near horizon. In this case, it’s Cedar Trail, yet another version of the Atom, this one built with a bleeding-edge 32-nanometer manufacturing process, which means all the elements on the chip will be even smaller yet. Intel’s current line of PC processors, the Sandy Bridge generation, is built on the same manufacturing technology. Cedar Trail will not only be smaller, but also will sport such things as a media engine for video playback at full HD resolution of 1080p.

Tablets and smartphones to this point have been another sore spot for Intel, where chips built on the core designs of U.K.-based ARM Holdings tend to hold sway. Intel’s chips have so far suffered from a nagging need to sip precious battery power far less greedily as compared to designs of ARM-based chips from the likes of Broadcom, Qualcomm, Samsung and others.

The new chip will run on tablets running Google’s Chrome and Android operating systems; MeeGo, the smartphone platform that Intel has been working on with Nokia (though its future is in question since Nokia’s decision to embrace Windows); and Microsoft’s Windows.

Meanwhile, Intel still has a lock on the market for traditional PC and server chips, though as we all know, tablets–one in particular–have been causing all kinds of troubles for the players in that end of the market.

On Thursday, Big Blue said it plans to invest $100 million over the next five years in mobile computing efforts, specifically emerging market mobility, mobile enterprise enablement and enterprise-to-end-user mobile experience. “Mobility and the associated analytics will change virtually every enterprise business process,” said Paul Bloom, chief technologist, IBM Telecom Research. “It will change the relationship between enterprises and their customers, their employees and their partners, enabling them to do business in more intelligent, efficient ways.”

A smart move for IBM, I think. With innovation in the mobile sector so focused on the everyday consumer, there’s certainly room for more corporate computing initiatives. And IBM (IBM) has the market heft and reputation to spur adoption there–particularly if it manages to develop some strong authentication and security measures.

On Thursday, Big Blue said it plans to invest $100 million over the next five years in mobile computing efforts, specifically emerging market mobility, mobile enterprise enablement and enterprise-to-end-user mobile experience. “Mobility and the associated analytics will change virtually every enterprise business process,” said Paul Bloom, chief technologist, IBM Telecom Research. “It will change the relationship between enterprises and their customers, their employees and their partners, enabling them to do business in more intelligent, efficient ways.”

A smart move for IBM, I think. With innovation in the mobile sector so focused on the everyday consumer, there’s certainly room for more corporate computing initiatives. And IBM (IBM) has the market heft and reputation to spur adoption there–particularly if it manages to develop some strong authentication and security measures.