Your cooker might have a clever digital timer, and your fridge its own nifty little screen, but when the man who invented the iPod and the iPhone came to build himself a house, nothing in the appliance shop was smart enough.
“It was all just so dumb,” says Tony Fadell. “I’d spent my life working on ephemeral technology products, so when I came to build something permanent I was shocked. It seemed like nothing had moved on in the sphere of the home for the last 50 years.”
It was 2005, and Fadell was leading the development of the iPhone at Apple, while planning a dream holiday house for his young family in Lake Tahoe. “I knew this device was going to become the centrepiece of our lives, and change the way we work and move around, so it became the lens through which I was looking at my home. What would a house look like if your smartphone became the primary way to control it?”
Almost 10 years later, Fadell, 48, presides over a company that is pioneering what he calls the “conscious home”. He announced partnerships with a further host of global corporations, from Mercedes to Whirlpool. The new programme will see its intelligent, data-driven technology reach further into every aspect of our lives, from cars and washing machines, to lighting and fridges — with appliances that are not only hooked up to the internet, but that can talk to each other. And it all began with a humble heating dial.
Chris Dancy, a U.S. software engineer has developed a smart house for himself in which everything is linked up to what he calls his “inner-net”. Wearing multiple devices at all times, which track everything from his heart-rate to his posture, he channels the data from over 700 sensors into a single online platform that then feeds back into devices in his home.
“If I get really stressed out and don’t sleep well, when I wake up the light is a certain colour, the room a particular temperature, and certain music plays. My entire life is preconditioned based on all this information that I collect in real time.”
He says his regime of “data-assisted living”, which he has been pursuing for the past four years, has revolutionised his life, helping him to lose 100 pounds in 18 months. He can now live in a state of zen-like calm, safe in the knowledge that every aspect of his home has been personally optimised.
Techno-sceptic’s view It is a form of “life-logging” that techno-sceptic Evgeny Morozov tackles in his book To Save Everything, Click Here. He describes this kind of self-tracking as the epitome of the “modern narcissistic quest for uniqueness and exceptionalism”, questioning why anyone would want to turn their homes into a “temple of surveillance”. Especially now they know Google might be watching.
Playing a dentist
But that’s no deterrent for those in the race for ever more quantified living, where the bathroom is set to be the next smart frontier.
“For the first time, we have data on how we brush our teeth, where we brush our teeth and where we need to improve,” says Renee Blodgett of Kolibree, the world’s first connected electric toothbrush.
San Francisco—based designer Yves Behar has recently unveiled a smart cup that knows exactly what you’re drinking and displays the nutritional content in real time. “But the smart toilet is going to be the next big thing, for analysing your health on a daily basis. It will be like having a doctor in your loo.”
So where might it end?
“It is a very alarming situation,” says Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, curator of this year’s Venice Biennale, in which the Nest thermostat features on a gallery wall, as a cautionary tale as much as a heroic symbol. “Our houses now know so much about us — and very soon they will begin to betray us.”
