(Fwd) Future tech

From: Yakov Horenstein (yakov@planet.it)
Date: Thu Nov 27 1997 - 23:48:53 EET


[Here are the first two paragraphs from a long article on the "smart" home.
Mail me if you want the whole thing]

> The networked family Linked appliances will be very convenient--and
>perhaps
> unnerving; Future tech
>
> (U.S. News & World Report; 11/26/97)
>
>
> Imagine that your house knows you. Imagine it knows you like to listen to
>Billie Holiday's "Ill Wind" when it's raining outside and "Pump It Up" by
>Elvis
>Costello when you're on the StairMaster. Imagine it knows what you have in
>the
>fridge and what to order to prepare for Friday evening's formal dinner for
>four. Imagine it knows to light your path through its halls, interpret your E-
>mail, and display digital reproductions of Judy Chicago works on flat-panel
>monitors when your feminist grandmother visits, Hole posters when your
>multipierced niece arrives.
>
> This setup may sound at once cool, bizarre, and tacky--but, above
>all,
>out of the question for all but billionaires like Bill Gates. But computer
>networking could change that sooner than you might think. By the turn of the
>century, ground- and satellite-based networks linking computers to the
>Internet
>will be everywhere, radically transforming the way we conduct business.
>Networks may even extend to household appliances--perhaps even to clothes in
>the closet--recasting them as digital butlers that could serve middle-class
>homes the way they do Gates's--only a lot more cheaply.

[there's LOTS more]

------------------------
Yakov Horenstein
Milano, Italy



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