The Digital Home of the Future, Revealed Today

The Digital Home of the Future, Revealed Today

By John Brandon
Published March 14, 2011
| FoxNews.com

Robots to help feed you, keep you safe, brush your teeth? Fat chance. In the near future, your home itself is that robot.

Rosie from "The Jetsons" had better look for a new job.

New research from businesses, corporations, and schools suggests that in the not-too-distant future, the digital home will adjust itself to meet your needs, provide new forms of surveillance and video communication, and manage energy use more effectively.

“The home will sense humans and know our gestures and actions," Jonathan Cluts, the director of consumer prototyping and strategy at Microsoft, told FoxNews.com.

Cluts, who is in charge of the Microsoft Home project, says radio ID tags will rule the roost in the future, communicating with central computers to let you know that the refrigerator is running low on milk.

He says the kitchen countertop will automatically recognize appliances, too, such as a food processor, and pop up instructions and tips on a countertop display. When you lay out ingredients, a computer will offer recipes based on what you have available and a history of your personal tastes. In the next few years, computers might be able to predict these preferences -- and even suggest that you buy more eggs.

Cont on link above

Does anyone really need a computer to remind them that they're low on milk? I doubt it. Someone will have to do a lot of convincing if they want to sell me a networked fridge :) and I don't even have a food processor :)

Now, what I need is a good organizer married to a phone. Can't find one. I don't need an App Store you see. I don't intend to buy any apps, I just need something to jolt down some notes and appointments as well as make calls.

unifex said:

Does anyone really need a computer to remind them that they're low on milk? I doubt it. Someone will have to do a lot of convincing if they want to sell me a networked fridge :) and I don't even have a food processor :)

Now, what I need is a good organizer married to a phone. Can't find one. I don't need an App Store you see. I don't intend to buy any apps, I just need something to jolt down some notes and appointments as well as make calls.

Sounds like you don't drink too much or party hardy which is okay.

Sounds like you are not very busy either.

When you get the munchies late at night and return the milk container to the frig after using it there is a good chance that you won't remember how much milk was left in the container especially if you leave the house the next morning without opening the refrigerator door.

However, when they tie all of this into your smartphone you will be able to check your food needs while at work during the day and do the necessary shopping on the way home from work. Of course if you work at home that is another story.

Jack LaLanne’s Power Juicer™ Official Site | As Seen on TV

Buddahfan said:

Sounds like you don't drink too much or party hardy which is okay.

No, I don't.

Buddahfan said:

Sounds like you are not very busy either.

Oh, I am busy all right, more than you can imagine.

Buddahfan said:

When you get the munchies late at night and return the milk container to the frig after using it there is a good chance that you won't remember how much milk was left in the container especially if you leave the house the next morning without opening the refrigerator door.

I don't do that. A good breakfast is very important, eating late is not good at all.

Buddahfan said:

However, when they tie all of this into your smartphone you will be able to check your food needs while at work during the day and do the necessary shopping on the way home from work. Of course if you work at home that is another story.

I don't have a smartphone either. I am looking for one, since I certainly need an organizer and I don't want to carry several things that could be one, but I just have not seen a good phone/organizer combination so far. I don't want an iPhone - we have an iPod Touch at home and I actually hate dealing with the thing and I certainly hate iTunes. And, I certainly don't need automatic reminders that I have not created myself, cause then they are just ads - and I don't need more ads.

We certainly all have our own lifestyles.

It will be interesting to see how it all evolves

This concept of being made aware of "home inventory" amounts is just the next step in what industry has been doing for a while and that is computerized inventory tracking.

It seems to me that the more complicated the inventory tracking is in business the greater the need for computerized tracking of inventory. As a retired Systems-Cost Accountant I can attest to that fact. It is the same in our homes. The more complicated our lives and inventories at home the more we can benefit by computerized tracking of our inventory at home.

If a person lives alone and is not very busy then they will have no real need for this. However, if you have a family and the adults in it work outside of the home they will obtain great benefit from computerized home inventory tracking.

As cool and beneficial as this sort of tech can be I can't help but feel apprehensive.

As each generation progresses and becomes increasingly reliant on machines to think for them they will reach a point where self-reliant thinking is for the most part, a lost skill.

When that occurs, simple things like a power outage, device failure etc will cause personal chaos because they'd be left standing around like gormless idiots.

And with the very real threat of natural or man made disaters that are becoming increasingly prevalant, these individual gormless idiots will suddenly become a multitude of ill-equipped gormless idiots incapable of basic tasks such as obtaining food. In a scenario like this, the attrition rate would be very high.

Obviously latent survival instincts will kick in, but in the interim period of enforced adaptation, who would adapt quicker with less chaos between a population used to thinking for themselves vs a population inherently used to being 'spoonfed' ?

So where and when should we as a species draw the line between the difference of convenience vs reliance? The lines of differentiation are already becoming murkier even now.

Already we have a generation that is a non-reliant generation of pre-connectivity based vs a post-connectivity reliant generation (internet, 'dumb phones', 'smart phones' etc ) . In the afore mentioned disater scenario, who would handle it easier?

I know who my money is on.


So as beneficial as it can be, is it really a direction we want to take?

It's already becoming increasingly apparent that common sense is becoming elusive. It's a dying art as we are told what to think. Extrapolate that with what we know now, add what is tantamount to a direction of total reliance and the picture becomes a little more darker.

Lordbob75 said:

I know I wouldn't mind having the fridge email me a list of groceries to pick up on the way home from work, I would forget constantly!

~Lordbob

Yes that would be very handy :) ... [your low on lettuce]