Thursday, September 9, 2010

Smart Homes


I first read about Smart homes in one of Isaac Asimov's books. They resembled homes built on the avenues of super corporations, enabled with artificial intelligence and leaving no work for the owner to perform but stay within.
Today's smart homes have come with central locking, visiphones, audio and climate controls, and even programmed water heating and mood lighting. This was a vast improvement over smart homes of the 80's which offered the automatic garage and climate control, and the late 90's when dynamic video surveillance and keyless entry was first offered in Daytona homes.
These are some advances I forsee.. Total maintenance of the house. Robot cleaners that can vaccuum-clean, and mop the floor at the same time dusting furniture and carpets. Digital Kitchen Manager, a system so advanced that all you need to do is program your end-result and everything gets done the way you want it.. If some specific ingredient like milk or a vegetable is required, it places an automatic order to the supermarket and takes charge of the delivery by electronic cash. It plans dinners, keeps an eye on the oven and stove and even makes sure that the cat is fed on time.
The house would have automated lawn mowers and gardeners, which would even report the seasonal variations to the owner to make necessary changes in the garden layout. A Smart-Bathroom system to shower, have a massage and dress up in all in one go... with a slot to even rest your chin on, as your hair gets brushes, stubble gets shaved and teeth brushed. Customization of body care can differ between the male and female humans that live within the home. Entire walls of the home can become visual screens, so that the family need not congregate around the living room TV after dinner. Phones and computers will not be in vogue anymore, as everyroom is enabled by Bluetooth so smart that all you need is to give voice commands, or maybe ultimately even thoughts!
The end result of all this is going to be the 'fall of Man'. I was reminded of the movie Wall-E when I wrote this, the degeneration of humanity at the cost of automating everything that involved his/her life. The ridiculous dependency on created intelligence, and the ascendance of these creations untethered on a lane with no limits until one day, we have to face a choice... Should we stop here? Because, another step or two further, Smart Homes or anything Smart would start to realise that they are 'Smarter' even than us.. This is where that end would begin...

No comments:

Post a Comment