Copyright Ian Pearson, BT Futurologist

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The future of the living room

For Business and Technology December 1997

I'm about to move house this weekend. My new living room has six sockets, but I have 27 electrical items in my lounge, so I see some serious DIY coming up. But soon, six will be enough again. Spaghetti will mostly vanish, thanks to infrared or radio. Integration and miniaturisation will allow one or two boxes to do anything you need (in electronics anyway) and these could easily be hidden away in a cupboard. Wall hanging screens should be much tidier and smaller appliances will probably use batteries. Your rapidly growing hi-fi and TV stacks will be integrated with your even more rapidly growing computer stack. You'll have lots of free space, and lots of displays, all flat and many wall hanging of course, with a few more liberally sprinkled around coffee tables. Even speakers can be totally flat and integrated into walls as can microphones and cameras, so these can be as visible or invisible as you like. I'm told people want to show of their gadgets, but I suspect this is a passing fad which will be replaced by minimalist fashion. Maybe a control panel would evidence the wealth of functionality elsewhere.

Your room won't be bleak though. Large displays will become cheap in much the same time frame, and they can double as fake windows onto a Jamaican beach, electronic paintings or a soothing fish tank when they aren't being used for other entertainment or communications. You could convert the room into a holodeck, fully lined with high resolution 3d displays, with the ultimate in intuitive interfaces. Just as on Star Trek, you could talk to the computer as if it were human, and it could create any environment you can describe with synthetic people to satisfy your every fantasy. Physical interaction will need the ultimate in data suits or a direct computer link into your nervous system. The holodeck can act as virtual office, shopping mall, games room and all round teleport chamber. When you have a dinner party, you could change it into an elaborate banqueting hall, set in orbit around Saturn. Imagine the family fights about who gets to use the holodeck! Your daughter wants to meet up with the boy she met in Italy, your son wants to save the universe and your better half wants to get some new clothes.

If you can't afford a room lined with screens, how about a pair of active contact lenses. Pop these in you eyes and you have full 3d vision of anything the computer throws at you, as tiny lasers write an image directly onto your retina. Of course they switch between opaque and transparent so you can overlay on the real world or simply replace it. They will be achievable around 2010.

If you aren't feeling outnumbered by the kids, by 2015 you will also have to live with a variety of robots, all of which will make some demands on your time. My favourite model of the near future home computer is an artificial kitten. A cute cuddly toy, it will have robotised legs so can walk round the house. It has video cameras for eyes and microphones in its ears. With a kittenish accent, it can use state of the art voice synthesis. Either it can have a full blown computer inside or a simple radio link to the one in the cupboard. So this kitten is your home interface to the entire world superhighway and everything connected to it. It can do anything within a computer's capability, including running the home finances and admin, acting as electronic butler etc. It also acts as security monitor, companion for little old ladies, and doesn't bring in fleas or dead mice. If you don't like cats, of course it could be any shape you like.

Other robots may be more specific, doing fetch and carry jobs, cleaning, even ironing and tending the pot plants. Some will be large, others may be insect sized. A colony of insect robots may pick up individual bits of dust and carry them to the bin. You'll step on them once in a while but they will be cheap.

So you'll be surrounded by artificial intelligence. With the range of activities available electronically from the couch, we could become lazy, but your personal health monitor will nag you to get up and work out. Instead of boredom, you will be able to exercise in any environment. Full limb force feedback exercise machines will be able to train you in any sport as well as a human coach. And thanks to the large screens on the wall, you can work out with your friends anywhere in the world, or run around in a game environment killing everything in sight. Technology comes and goes, but we're still the same.

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