Disneyland's new House of the Future will look like the boring recent past
The new version will look like a suburban McMansion and will feature stuff that sounds like rejects from CES: touch-screen home automation, automatic lights and temperature (oooh, a thermostat!), and assorted junk from HP, Microsoft, and a couple other sponsors.
I'd rather see Disney give us something built out of surplus shipping containers, filled with just-in-time blobjects that track their existence through spimes and gracefully decompose into the manufacturing stream at their end of life. Something that at least looks like the future, rather than the model home in a pre-subprime-meltdown housing development.
Link (via /.)
When a resident clicks a TV remote, for example, lights will dim, music will shut off and the shades will draw as the network realizes a movie is about to start.The system will allow residents to transfer digital photos, videos and music among televisions and computers in different rooms at the click of a button. Other applications still in development could include touch-screen technology built into appliances, furniture and countertops, said Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's vice president for entertainment services.
In the kitchen, for example, touchpad software on the countertop would be able to identify groceries and produce recipes and meal suggestions. Similar programs could turn a desktop into a computer screen, allowing residents to load photos, music or e-mail onto a cell phone by placing it on the desk.
(Image: Yesterland)
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There Will Come Soft Rains (August 4, 2026/2057)
Main article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Will_Come_Soft_Rains_%28short_story%29
There Will Come Soft Rains (short story)
First published in Collier's, May 6, 1950.
The story concerns a household in Allendale, California after the nuclear war has wiped out the population. Though the family is dead, the automated house which took care of the family still functions.
The reader learns a great deal about what the family was like from how the robots continue on in their functions. Breakfast is automatically made, clothes are laid out, voice reminders of daily activities are called out, but no one is there. Robotic mice vacuum the home and tidy up. As the day progresses, the rain quits, and the house prepares lunch and opens like a flower to the warm weather. Outside, a vivid image is given: the family's silhouettes which are permanently burned onto the side of the house (as was exemplified at Hiroshima) when they were vaporized by the nuclear explosion. The most disturbing is of two children playing catch. That night, a storm crashes a tree into the home, starting a fire that the house cannot combat, as the municipal water supply has dried up and failed.
The title of the story comes from a poem, randomly selected by the house to read at bedtime, also titled "There Will Come Soft Rains." The theme of the poem is that nature will survive after humanity is gone, reflecting the theme of the story; that even the vast cities of humanity will eventually be reclaimed by nature. In the original story in Collier's, the story took place 35 years into the future, on April 28, 1985.[2]
This is one of the most famous short stories in science fiction.
Beautiful poem Darue, thanks for posting the link. Anyone caught the History Channel's Life After People?
The future will be a left turn from more power, more automation. They should try something underground, or made of alternative materials. The structure itself should promote independence from outside energy, and more dependence on social community ties.
"Other applications still in development could include touch-screen technology built into appliances, furniture and countertops, said Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's vice president for entertainment services."
In other words, it's pimping for Microsoft Surface.
This shows the sad state human ingenuity when the "future" is no more than promotional outlet for contemporary corporate products. How can we allow ourselves to envision the future when we're so stuck in the past?
There is no future until we ______________ (I'll let you fill in the rest).
#2: Darue: Wow, what a shocker. Reminds me of the impact the book "The Fate of the Earth" had on me in the 80s, when the Cold War was still at a fever pitch. The book forewarned us of a world inhabited primarily by cockroaches and grass as the most likely post-nuclear living creatures and plant life, respectively...
By comparison, my comments are trite, but, regarding the original topic I would still like to encourage people to check out the "Not So Big House" series by Sarah Susanka.
http://www.notsobighouse.com/
Susanka's "Not So Big House" concepts is the real deal for the home of the future, which shuns the gigantism of a McMansion/Tyvek Temple (often with rooms and entire wings of a house that go unused) to less but better-designed space used for multiple purposes, actually enhancing everyday living. She did mention in her first book how the Disneyland "House of the Future" was obsolete in less than a year or so.
Susanka's NSBH concepts are a smart extention of the "Usonian" house design concepts of Frank Lloyd Wright, also noted in her book.
Definitely well worth checking out.
Now if we can just keep "the button" away from the Islamic and Christian fundamentalists...
One extra note to my above post...the Disneyland "House of the Future" Susanka mentions in her book is the original one from the 60s, which became obsolete very quickly. People visitng the 'future' house didn't take to the joys of sitting on uncomfortable molded plastic chairs, Susanka wrote :-)
There are other similarly hapless past efforts to create 'homes of the future' noted in her book, which also fell flat on their face as lame, boring, and uninspiring places to live.
I guess Disneyland history is repeating itself!
#2 Darue: As cheesy as I thought "Logan's Run" was, it had the same ending message, that the earth would eventually heal itself, centuries after we ignorant humans try to destroy it with nukes. Thank you for that poem.
I'll join the chorus of people saying it's lame. If you can pretty much do all that stuff now, it's not the house of the future! I hope they at least do some exciting stuff architecturally and design-wise. How depressing would it be if they made it a vinyl sided stick-framed cracker box?
How is Microsoft shilling their software any different than MONSANTO shilling their plastics?
People visiting the 'future' house didn't take to the joys of sitting on uncomfortable molded plastic chairs...
Well, we carry a lot more of our own padding now, don't we.
Re: #2, That story made me cry when I read it as a child, and just thinking about it makes me cry today. It had a huge impact on me.
What about a house with velvet tapestries and sumptuous sable drapes, with oak wainscoting and marble floors? Forget about microwave ovens, electric toasters, and programmable coffee makers.
@#9: it's not exactly a poem, but very poetic; it's a discription of a story in Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.
of course the last homely home of the future in that story couldn't be this latest one disney's slapped together. sounds like they couldn't even be bothered to buy a roomba for the place. do they really think we'll want the kitchen to make recipe suggestions based on what supplies are stocked? how soulless. anyway, mine would only be able to suggest reheating the pizza. which I can think of on my own thanks.