Microsoft wanted by 2010-ish a home where wallpapers were digital, kitchens were revolutionary and houses which were entertainment factories. Did vision become reality? Article
With all its efforts, Microsoft has made many attempts to sway the consumer view of the future of the average home. In a series of videos released sporadically over the last few years, the company has built up a fantasy of which networks, "meshifies" and entices the ordinary homeowner to become a true home user.
Take exhibit one, 2009; a home designed by Microsoft to show them how a home could look in 10-15 years time. With features such as a reminding you to take your medication, recipes determined by the food stuffs you place on the kitchen worktop, surfaces with "computational input" and speech recognition combined with "learning capabilities" to discover more about you and base processes on those facts.
Using Bluetooth to connect phones to displays mounted in the ceilings of rooms, and text recognition or smart tags embedded in business cards will be a common way to interact between two items; seen in Microsoft Surface devices, for example. Amazing, you may think - and you would be right. But part of me takes pleasure of being able to input a phone number manually into my own phone.
Also you see in the video a digital wallpaper, which teenagers can use in their bedroom to interact with their own surroundings. When I was a wee nipper, if I was sent to my room, it was for a good purpose - as a punishment. My parents wouldn't be best pleased if I was getting more out of going to my room than anywhere else in the house. Could the future technology-oriented house cause the comeback of the naughty step?
Distractions in the bedroom, technology so fitted to the house you forget what that massive burning ball of heat in the sky is, and computers which monitor your medications... some would call it witchcraft, I call it plain ridiculous. While some would be happy to live in a house where computers take over everyday tasks for you, it shows the dependence we have on technology.
Exhibit two,2005interests me more as it was videoed nearly half a decade ago with some more realistic, yet still far fetched ideas of what the future home would look like. A lot of the technologies that you may or may not see in the video have already been implemented to some extent; Windows Media Center and Apple's direct equivalent, Apple TV has made a massive contribution to thousands of homes across the world.
Even though the vast majority of things seen in these videos, such as mirrors with projectors and screens behind which let you read the morning news as you apply your make-up don't exist in the ordinary home, as pointed out in the comments section, some have triggered a breakthrough in home entertainment. Blu-ray (back in the day of the HD-DVD controversy) and HDTV technology which is very much mainstream in our homes and offices.
To look further at the Microsoft Home in London, the company opened up the CD content to the web for everyone to see.
But more interestingly would be the bandwidth and electricity costs involved. Maybe it would be, but I suspect even then it wouldn't be as easy as turning off the house at night and starting it up again at the flick of a switch. Every part of the house would either have to remain on all night, or would have to go through the comradery of booting up every morning. What sort of life would you leave if you couldn't make pancakes in the morning until your kitchen had fully booted up?
The British government has said it will be getting 2MB broadband in every home by 2012. Microsoft's visions reach those of around 2010-12, not realising or foreseeing the slow bandwidth to support IPTV, on-demand recipes and Skype'ing your sister from one side of the country to the other using the fridge and a speakerphone.
The point I am trying to make, is Microsoft's ability to see ahead into the future and gauge what can be done is an impressive one. However, the infrastructure, the bandwidth and the costs involved simply haven't been considered. Sure, if everyone was as rich as Bill Gates, we'd be able to have a house like his, with a plethora of technology spanning every aspect of the home life. But we don't... which reminds me...
Would you want a house which runs like the Microsoft homes? If you could pick one thing from the concept homes, what would it be? Leave a TalkBack and share your thoughts.
