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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."
In addition to the standard house-of-the-future home automation, the house will also include its own micro-fusion electric generator (running on tap water), a landing pad for the flying car, and Duke Nukem Forever running on a secure update to Microsoft Windows.
Full support for multiple DRM technologies is built into everything!
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Visitors will experience the look of tomorrow by watching Disney actors playing a family of four preparing for a trip to China to welcome their new Chinese overlords. Fixt.
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.
Oh the possibilites... - What happens if I'm in the shower and the OS crashes? Will it never turn off? - Will the toilet only accept one kind of input? - Will the house "phone home" to let said manufacturers know what I do in the house? (For statistics only, no personal information of course) - Will my furniture be compatible with the floor? - What if the fridge is stuck in an infinite loop and keeps ordering me eggs? - Can it defrag my junk drawer?
You never expect irony, do you?
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Of course, it makes sense that they are planning a trip to China, since all of the stuff in house was probably made there, and after the next big credit crunch, they might even be going overseas to pay forced-homage to the mortgage lender.
Toil is Stupid. Don't be Stupid.
As if we didn't hear enough "suggestions" in our daily lives. Didn't Ray Bradbury kill his house for this very same reason?
The house of the future is a yurt.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Shouldn't a "house of the future" be smaller than current houses? If they are to be available to all humans, I mean.
Also, I still have hope that USians will start using the metric system someday... so overall, I'd suggest that a more sensible house of the future would be about 100 or 200 square metres.
What's not mentioned is that DRM will be built right into your house. It will prevent you from doing anything that Disney considers a violation of intellectual property (as Disney defines it). That means your VCR won't record. Your DVR will self-destruct. Your computer won't download music or videos. You CDs will be locked to the first player you use the disc in. Your original and priceless manuscript of Grimm's Fairy Tales will smolder and burn (Disney now owns all that). iPods and other MP3 players will have permanent memory corruption. You'll be sent a bill for royalties if it detects you singing copyrighted songs in the shower (and the "Happy Birthday" song you sing for your kid on his third birthday).
-- Will program for bandwidth
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
While I think it would be awesome to see the art and decor transform depending on who walks into a room...this just highlights to me that we may become more disconnected from each other as we optimize the digital world to our own personal likes. Not that it's bad...maybe we were all meant to relate to each other through screens, keyboards, and mice. Maybe the benefit of the digital world is that it provides a better way to share experience when we choose. Either way, it's good to recognize what's going on.
...does it run Linux?
"Visitors will experience the look of tomorrow by watching Disney actors playing a family of four preparing for a trip to China."
Probably just their normal daily commute to work.
When it comes to aesthetics, designers decided to stray from the Jetsons-style House of the Future - an all-plastic cross design with four wing-shaped bays that appeared to float. The house was so tough that wrecking balls bounced off it when Disney ripped it down in 1967.
... I kinda think a house tough enough to withstand a wrecking ball has a lot of forward thinking utility.
The new home will be made of wood and steel and finished in muted browns and beiges, said Sheryl Palmer, president and chief executive of Taylor Morrison in North America.
I dunno
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
Yes, an entire house programmed to second guess your every move...to "help" you. How could that not be terrific?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB03aRifPLU
That may work in the House of the Future, but it will never be approved by the Senate of the Future.
Think global, act loco
Microsoft has a hand in it, so considering how they write their software I doubt you can remove or replace anything in thhe house without the walls turning blue, black, or crashing down.
If you remove the laser razor is it "House Of The Future Lite"? I'll bet you can only use Microsoft Light Bulbs and Microsoft Lamps because the bulb screws, light sockets, and wall plugs are all nonstandard and proprietary.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Father: Come on medicine cabinet! I need my insulin!
Automated medicine cabinet: The serial number on your refrigerator seems to be invalid. Please call 1-800-chinasoft for assistence.
Father: Alright but hurry up I have to get to work.
Phone: It appears your telephone service provider is not supported. Can I interest you in signing up for MSNfone?
Father: I knew I should have installed linux but I just couldn't find those drivers for my countertop and showercurtain .
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
I'm surprised that's all they could come up with... It sounds like it was designed by whimsy than practicality. Nothing they mention sounds like an ideal house to me. Maybe thermostat, but I live in Southern California, so it's not like that fluctuates a lot...
In the "future", I'd really prefer a house that -
1) helps me keep it clean. I've always envisioned a carpet that has a vacuum system beneath it, and will suck up all the dirt and grim and little bits from below.
2) an in-sink dishwasher, where I can simply pile my dirty dishes into the sink, slide the top closed, and let it do it's thing without me having to clean by hand or pre-scrub and load them into a separate unit.
3) has an embedded software system that will help me track my chores and tasks for that day, wake me in the morning, remind me of events on certain dates... basically calendar software that can be accessed from any wall in the house. (probably the closest scenario to what they have in the article).
4) runs energy efficient! uses energy recycling tech to generate as much of it's own power supply as possible - i.e. solar power, walking around generates kinetic energy picked up through the floor, running tap and shower catch access energy as they drain, etc.
I don't know, I just made this up off the top of my head by looking around my apartment (you can guess what shape it's in), but I think Disney's little inventors are looking too much in the direction of luxury, and not enough in the direction of practicality and things that people would really want to help them live their lives more comfortably.
Most of their ideas are cute but not especially helpful to anyone. I'd throw all those ideas out for a real laundry machine. I want to toss my dirty clothes in at night, and the next morning have them waiting for me, cleaned, dried, ironed, sorted, and folded.
5000 square feet? Thats not a house - thats a mansion! Are they going to China to find a full time cleaning crew to chase after the dust bunnies in their 8 bedrooms and 6 1/2 bathrooms?
Just the same - I'm a sucker for Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and look forward to visiting the protype house of the Corporate Liege Lord in the future.
"The 5000-square-foot house will appear normal from the outside".... just like everyone else's 5000 square foot homes ;-p
"countertops that can identify food placed on it and suggest recipes"
how stupid is that... when my food gets on the countertop, it's because I already know what I am going to do with it...
Will I need to empy my fridge on my countertop to know what to cook every day?
Anyway, it's been tried before and it's totally useless.... instead it should track what you have in the fridge and suggest what you can cook with what you have... or tell you what to buy to make a specific recipe...
Me: What can I cook ?
Fridge: Beer... beer chicken... beer hotdogs... beer cheese... beer...
Popsci has another take on the Home of the the Future.
My house wouldn't be built around gimmicky crap like auto moodlighting or suggesting recipies. Mine would be more practical innovation. Bathrooms and kitchens coated in titanium dioxide treated to dissapate dirt and mildew. It'll have a 3D fabrication Printer to print out dishes or maybe even chair parts when we have extra company. Automated machines to cut the grass (if I don't go with bio-engineered no-mow grass.) The construction itself will be steel framed and built using modular panels but build to be reconfigurable (relativly.) Replacing drywall with bolted or snap-in-place steel-backed panels (the exposed surface side could be bare steel, have wood glued on, wallpapered, etc.) allowing for me to access the interior portions of the wall with ease. My particular aesthetic would be bare steel panels, with cables run along the outside in bundles, but it would be easy to reconfigure it to appear 'classical' with the wires hidden behind the now covered panels. I want my home of the future to be flexable, low(er) maintenance, and something that will last.
Demented But Determined.
I got this from somewhere. p2pnet I think. What if the bad guys win? Going to the movies is not what it used to be. Security at the studio-owned theatres is heavy, it's not a trip to be taken lightly. But if you want to see the film everyone is talking about without waiting a year for the home release, you have little choice. When you enter the lobby the first thing you see are long ranks of tiny, thumbprint activated lockers. This is where you must leave all of your electronics, your personal server and peripherals, even your watch, and you had better not be wearing smart spectacles or contacts. As you enter the security zone you're scanned for anything you may have forgotten. Cochlea and optical implants must be capable of responding with a coded RF identification signal to indicate their systems are secure and cannot record. People with older models, or models implanted abroad where such interrogation is illegal, are turned away. Perhaps they would like to see one of the older releases? Once through the scanner you must submit to a biometric ID test - this is where the known bloggers, hackers and spoilers are ejected. Finally there is the non-disclosure agreement to be signed - these days most moviegoers choose to sign via the MPAAs annual subscription, just trying to take some of the hassle out of visiting the cinema. Finally you get to see the film. In the auditorium the audience is constantly scanned by an AI looking for suspicious activity, so don't rummage in your pockets for too long. It's strange that all this effort to protect the movie industry has done so little to improve the movies. You don't really own your home computer, or even the data you keep on it. Oh, you paid for it, just like you paid for the fibre-optic Internet connection that it can't function without, but now it squats under your TV using your electricity and does more work for the content industry than for you. The nightly security patches it downloads for itself don't secure your computer against attackers, they secure the system and software against you. TV-on-demand seemed like a dream come true when you first opted in and upgraded all your hardware, but the slowly encroaching charges are becoming a disincentive to turn on at all. Sometimes the last episode of a series makes up 50% of the cost of the whole season. The Internet is not what it used to be. It's expanded, naturally, the technology giving everyone mobile PCs with vast ad-hoc networking capabilities, it's faster, more efficient, and more available, but it's also more restrictive. Since the ISPs were made responsible for the content they deliver their filtering has become neurotic. Anti-terror, piracy, plagiarism and libel filters search every request and response for signs of illegal activity, always erring on the side of caution. Wikipedia's index has been decimated. Popular blogs like Boing Boing now have more lawyers involved than contributors (the one's that have survived that is). Even if you managed to get something illegal through the filters your operating system's regularly updated self-check mechanisms would eventually root it out, or report you to the authorities, usually both. These days it seems like every time you turn on one of your gadgets you have to fight with its DRM to get it to do what you want. The home movie of your daughter opening her birthday presents is ruined by a patch of grey fog that shifts with every movement of the camera, tracking sluggishly to keep the TV screen in the background obscured. From the codes embedded in TV's update pattern your camera had decided the show was not licensed for this form of reproduction and blocked it. You wish you had thought to turn it off at the time, but squinting into the camera's tiny screen it hadn't looked so bad. Even once recorded, your own media is not safe. Everything is stored on your home PC, trapped in the solid-state drive's proprietary filing system. Once there, the only reasonable way to transfer it is to another trusted drive from the same vendor - the DRM won't recognise any other brand of
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.
Oh, come on, stupid mods! It's actually funny (though admittedly very childish) and on topic considering this is a Disney "House of the Future". What I want to know is - does it have a holographic projection room so my kids can pretend they are in the African Veldt?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Best janitor breakroom ever?
[+HAL9000 voice] Excuse me, Dave. It seems you have a large quantity of SPAM there, may I suggest a recipe? [-HAL9000 voice]
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
In 2007, the average US single family home was 2,330 square feet. It would be nice to see a home of the future that isn't of a size current day mansion. I'd love a huge house, but realistically, very few of us can truly afford one.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
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.
See, if you were running an operating system that didn't crash all the time, you wouldn't be so grumpy. :)
every gadget will have NO REPEAT NO lights, not even the smallest flicker. Even the damn mac has the green light on the power line. My epson printer has three, and one continually blinks.
Profound changes must take place, and NO LIGHTS is one of them.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
... and Yul Brynner goes nuts and kills everybody.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.