In the future, everything will be on the grid--lights, music, A/C, even your body itself. The trouble, of course, is that the grid has no edges. Dwell, October/November 2005
My wife and I recently drove the entire length of Interstate 80, from San Francisco to New York. After a few nights spent in roadside motels, we stayed overnight with friends in Chicago and experienced the wonderful feeling of home. Arriving at their apartment just in time for dinner, we discovered that there was chicken in the oven, a mole sauce on the stove, the A/C blasting away the Chicago summer heat, and a cozy guest bedroom ready for us--one free of paper-wrapped cups or stiff, starchy sheets. And yet for all that, what really made it feel like home was their WiFi. I guess it's come to that: for me, home is where the broadband is.
Around 35 million households in the US have a broadband Internet connection--either DSL or cable--meaning that for a lot of us, the flickering computer screen is fast replacing the television as the new electronic hearth. Whether perched on the kitchen counter or the couch, whether summoning movies or keeping track of photos, money and music, computers somehow manage to offer endless entertainment, comfort, and sustenance. George Jetson had his control panel that got the shirts ironed and the carpets vacuumed; we have our iTunes, our web grocers, and our electronic bill-pays--which seems pretty close.
But we're getting closer still. The wired house of the near-future is all about integration: not only will your digital music library beam itself into the kitchen (an easy chore already), but your kitchen will just as readily beam its refrigerator's contents back to your computer so you know what needs restocking. Everything will be on the grid--lights, music, even your body itself. The trouble, of course, is that the grid has no edges. Modern architecture imagines spaces without walls, with inside and outside seamlessly flowing together. The wired house imagines the same, but with information--yours.
Bandwidth
When it comes to bandwidth, more is more. And increasingly, knowing how much bandwidth you have is becoming as important as knowing the wattage of your light bulbs. The number itself counts, but not as much as what it brings: not only faster web surfing, but also the next step in multimedia technology. Verizon's new Fios fiber-optic service (www.verizonfios.com), which is at least five times faster than cable and is slowly becoming available across the country, finally makes it as feasible to download a full-length movie at DVD quality as it is to download music. Fios will also make Internet-based telephone services (a.k.a. "Voice over Internet Protocol") like Vonage (www.vonage.com) steadier--and better sounding--than your old landline. And as internet-enabled digital picture frames, like the CEIVA (www.ceiva.com), grow in size and shrink in price, the extra bandwidth will allow photos from far-off family to magically appear each morning on the LCD screen. Maybe it will even allow for videoconferences where the participants don't all appear to be underwater.
Home Inventory
Since the beginning of this year, Wal-Mart has required that its top suppliers put radio frequency identification (RFID) tags--which are like bar codes but are nearly invisible--in all their shipping crates. It's a big step towards what seems inevitable: RFID tags in everything there is to buy. Once the milk, cereal, orange juice, and even the sticker on a banana has a postage-stamp sized RFID tag in it, an internet-connected refrigerator starts to make more sense--particularly if it's hooked up to an online grocer, which would not only compose your shopping list but deliver its contents to you.
Elsewhere, Intel has also been developing a system that combines RFID tags with sophisticated home sensors to track the movement of objects. Envisioned for an aging population, it could allow family members or medical professionals to monitor when a prescription pill bottle, or maybe just the prune juice, was moved during the day. Or, add RFID tags to books, magazines and DVDs, and suddenly there's an instant inventory of your collection--the better for retailers to recommend future additions. Wal-Mart is watching.
Health
RFID tags measure what's outside your body, but a new toilet from Japanese maker TOTO measures what's inside. A built-in urine analyzer sends your very personal information to a computer and--eventually, one expects--to health-care professionals, who can recommend changes to your diet. The technology is sure to go over well with Major League Baseball.
Security
Regular home wireless networks have brought down the price of installing cameras and door sensors that are easily monitored via Internet. Motorola's inexpensive Homesight system, for example, plugs into your computer and will send an email or text message when something is amiss back at the ranch. But the future of the technology is in ever more kinds of information: Researchers at Intel, for example, have recognized that new parents are eager for better baby monitors, ones offering high-quality video, heart rate sensors, or temperature and humidity readings of the baby's room. But since all that is feeding into the computer already, it might as well be saved--whether for candid naptime videos or an info-graphic memento of baby's first fever.
The odd thing about all this wiring (and unwiring) of the home is that every bit of bandwidth would seem to draw your attention further away from it. But then again, everything about our lives is less local than it once was. All this technology might therefore offer comfort, however strange. At times it may be convenient, at times creepy, but always it promises to be a fair reflection of contemporary life.
