Having talked to several experts about how we will live in the years ahead and after reviewing some of the literature pertaining to the future, I am not at all certain I want to leave the familiar, comfortable mid-eighties. But if I have to go, it won't be alone. You come, too.
Let's begin our journey at a familiar point, the kitchen of today, including one particular forerunner of things to come: the microwave oven. Today, no kitchen is complete without a microwave oven. This bit of wizardry makes it possible for master chefs such as myself to reduce perfectly good food to inedible glop in minutes. It used to take hours. Marvelous. But designers suggest that the microwave oven will, in short order, be viewed as something of an antique. Whole new food-processing systems will take matters completely out of the hands of bumbling mortals. If, in the year 2000, you are still among those old-fashioned workers who commute rather than work from your home, you will simply call home before you prepare to leave and give orders to your kitchen devices. "Rustle up a nice pot of burgoo," you will say, or something to that effect. Storage compartments will send the specified foods to the preparation chambers, and the meal will be delivered to the dining area when your "smart house" senses that you've arrived and are ready to chow down.
In the brave new world that is just around the corner, says Dan Casolaro of Computer Age publications, any action you want performed can be accomplished by an artificially intelligent device. These computer-driven devices will sense and act in any number of helpful ways, providing "computer muscle" to do the cooking or shift around the furniture, or clean the house. Computer muscle will move walls, adjust windows, close doors, rotate your house to follow the sun, even sense the mood you are in and adjust the lights and music or other entertainment accordingly.
Casolaro predicts that by the year 2000 the average person will be reaping the tremendous benefits of the so-called Star Wars program, just as we benefited from the technological strides of earlier space programs when products such as Teflon arrived in the home. "Already the space station research has brought about remarkable advances in computer software," Casolaro says. "We seem to leap four or five years ahead with each new development in telerobotics, speech recognition, and visual recognition. We already have robots capable of a variety of sensitive actions. They may not look like robots in the science fiction sense, but they are robotic systems."
It seems that the future is coming at us just about as fast as we can tolerate it. Browsing through a current home design magazine, one encounters some fairly astonishing products now on the market. A security device from British Telecom can be incorporated into the door lock--it recognizes voice prints. Robotic "pets" are on the market that act as watchdogs, detecting motion within fifteen feet. Honeywell is offering the "Call-In-Control" which allows you to phone in commands to turn lights or appliances on or off. Computer-controlled sewing machines, already on the market, give just a hint of the wonders ahead. With products such as these already on the shelf today, what in the world awaits us in the years ahead?
Whole-house systems
One person who has some answers to
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