Home of the future

Terry Gold wants to build the Office of the Future, but if you want to see the Home of the Future, take a look at this exclusive tour on MSN Tech.

Unfortunately none of the ideas are really all that radical, which makes me suspect little of it will actually happen.  Just about everything in there is possible today -- and for the most part, pretty affordable.  Most people who care about such things either have, or will have, the nice HDTV in the living room running Media Center or equivalent.  RFID everywhere is nice, but how much would you really use it?  At 4:30 every afternoon, most Americans don't know what they're going to eat for dinner, and that's not going to change much no matter what technology does.

What would you have designed as the home of the future 10 years ago?  When I lived in Japan, Ken Sakamura at the University of Tokyo built a wonderful gadget-laden home with many of the things in today's MS Home: a refrigerator that tells you when you're out of milk, music that plays in every room, LCD windows that turn opaque at the touch of a button.  He even had a toilet that tested your urine every time you pee and would notify the hospital if it thinks you have cancer. But he completely forgot to add ubiquitous email and Internet, which has transformed daily home life far more than any of those gadgets.

What would be radical? How about IP everywhere that doesn't result in new gadgets, but new unthinkably wonderful uses for existing ones.  Think about what families do today, but imagine if technology seamlessly makes it all better:

• communicating and sharing with relatives and friends
• planning vacations and nights out
• entertaining ourselves and guests
• eating
• hygiene
• clothing

Many of the things I like only become interesting if everyone uses it.  Like high-quality 5.1 sound and video when talking with relatives.

and much more...

[thanks to M3]