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Disney Takes Another Stab at the House of the Future
Disney has announced that they are going to take another stab at showing us the "House of the Future". The 5000-square-foot house will appear normal from the outside but will house gadgets like lights and thermostats that automatically adjust when someone enters the room and countertops that can identify food placed on it and suggest recipes. "Millions of Disneyland visitors lined up a half-century ago to catch a glimpse of the future: a home teeming with mind-blowing gadgets such as handsfree phones, wall-sized televisions, plastic chairs, and electric razors and toothbrushes. [...] The $15 million home is a collaboration of The Walt Disney Co., Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., software maker LifeWare and homebuilder Taylor Morrison. Visitors will experience the look of tomorrow by watching Disney actors playing a family of four preparing for a trip to China."
So, technology that's been around for decades but not popular in homes, and technology that is a solution looking for a problem (if I've chosen to buy food, bring it home, and set it one the counter [or take it out of the fridge and set it on the counter] chances are I already had a use in mind—countertops that suggest recipes for food placed on them seem about as useful as as a closet that suggest where I might want to go based on the clothes I take out.)
For $15 million, I'm not impressed.
As if we didn't hear enough "suggestions" in our daily lives. Didn't Ray Bradbury kill his house for this very same reason?
Wouldn't the house of the future be made up of easily interchangable parts that can be easily retrofitted to existing structures? It wouldn't be something designed from the ground up with today's bleeding-edge technologies. Part of the hassle of doing work in the houses of today are parts, fixtures, or even the location of holes, that are of a new standard and plain just don't work with anything else.
Twinstiq, game news
I would like to see a completely sound-proofed house with all appliances designed to work as quietly as possible.
After all, it is highly unlikely that the volume of sensory input people have to endure outside the home is going to decrease anytime soon.
Hell, people are already patenting devices to track your eyes so their adverts can talk to you if they think they have your attention.
My home of the future might well resemble a faraday cage.
Discovery Channel had a show about this called 2057. The toilet checked your urine for drug usage, and if it detected it, notified your insurance company who then canceled your health insurance. So in the show, a guy who drank some alcohol on the weekend got his insurance canceled while he was in the ER because he fell out a window (unrelated to the alcohol).
No thanks. I have no interest in this "smart house" crap at all. In the future, I want a house that's extremely eco-friendly (and consequently has no utility bills), but all this intrusive technology connected to mega-corporations I have no interest in.