Smart Houses

My co-worker just bought a condo. She's happy. She told me it's cute but doesn't have the charm of my house. I told her that charm = stuff breaking and needing work. My house has the potential for charm but I'm not sure it's got charm itself, yet. But now at least my steam pipes are insulated, and my water leak is fixed.

Via Andrew Zolli, and apropos of nothing, here's an interesting little piece about smart houses. It was written 10 years ago, but it's still provocative. And makes me sad, for some reason. Something in it also reminds me of a sci-fi story I read years ago, which I can't remember anything about (author, title, etc.). The concept was that there was a particular kind of glass, 10 year glass, that took light 10 years to pass through. So you would look out the window of your house and what you would see was what was happening outside 10 years ago. There came to be quite a market for glass that had been set out in forests or rural areas -- so that people in cramped urban blighty homes could look out their window and see a deer grazing in a field. Sort of like ice-nine, I've remembered 10 year glass as though it were a real thing. I think a smart house would probably make the view from your window something peaceful and delightful even if it weren't real. At least that would be an option, and possibly a default setting, like the screen saver background of the tropical paradise. I can't decide if I would be able to resist that and instead look across the street at my shabby neighbor who throws stale hot dog buns into the street for the crows.

Comments

[Chuck Welch]

Your glass was "slow glass" and was used by the author, Bob Shaw, as a plot device in various stories. I seem to remember that it was refined so that it could be set for a specific time delay. You could back up to a mirror and see your dress from behind a few seconds later and so on.

I believe the glass was "discovered" when a series of safe automobiles seemed to have a high number of accidents.

I knew someday that piece of trivia would be useful.

reference:
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/exper/kcramer/anth/Shaw.html

[TPB, Esq.]

You've reminded me of a story in Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, about a smart house "dying" after a nuclear war. It was a particularly impressive story since there were no active characters other than the house.

I always hoped for the idea that houses would get smart enough to detect (as it is said would happen; also the same has been said of pc "desktops") mood and display different images, provide different soundtracks, and adopt a different climate resultingly.

[will]

this is very cool thanks

will clifton

You probably don't read comments quite this old, but I'm just now reading through the archives, having only discovered your blog a few days ago. Anyway, the Ray Bradbury story referred to above is "There Will Come Soft Rains." It's most excellent.