HOME on the Range or Something Else?

Fast Talk: Home Improvement

Intel's Genevieve Bell on why our homes will never be like George Jetson's.

From: Issue 111 | December 2006 | Page 62 | By: Alan Deutschman

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Genevieve Bell

Director, User Experience, Digital Home Group, Intel Corp.
Beaverton, Oregon

Bell, 39, is a native Australian whose ethnography work helps translate insights about human behavior into technology for Intel. She recently led a six-month study of the "digital home," conducting 400 interviews in 86 households across 13 countries. Here, she explains why The Jetsons is a fantasy that will never be achieved.

"Our office working spaces are framed by ideas of efficiency--saving time, money, energy--and we've often applied that to the home. We've tried to make the home more rational, all that language from the '30s and '40s about 'domestic science' and 'home economics.' But we actually spend more time doing laundry now than in 1945, which is staggering. You used to have to chop wood to do it! Why? Technology has changed our standards of cleanliness; now you don't wear the same thing twice. The machinery has made us more efficient on one level, but it also has made more work. The most popular and beloved technologies in the home haven't made us more efficient--TV, for example. So the challenge for technology companies isn't to see the home as another place where we can rationalize production.

The digital home is never going to be about technology--it's about the people who live there. We have slow-moving cultural paradigms, and 'home' means something in our imaginations. In England and America, you say, 'My home is my castle.' In India, people talk metaphorically about their homes as 'pure' and the outside world as 'polluted.' In Indonesia, home means grace, modesty, and simplicity.

The things that people care about aren't changing-- we're curious, we want to be socially connected and spiritually inspired. The home is not a blank slate waiting for technology to arrive."

Fast Company Polls - Make Yourself Heard

Q: Do you think the hi-tech home is coming?

Current Results (95 votes counted so far)

Yes, it will be here soon : 45%

Yes, but in another decade : 47%

No -- it`s just a dream : 7%

Thanks for your vote! Now you can add your comments here

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Comments from readers:

The hi-tech home-cocoon already exists witness radios, the telephone, TV, sound systems, VCR's, cable and satelite communicatons, computers, the Internet, DVD's, digital still and networked video cams, video home security systems and sensors, cell-phones, PDA's, I-Pod's, wireless networks, gaming consoles, HDTV and worldwide broadband connectivity. Now cometh the "convergence" issues relative to the outside world around us and how that will work to improve our lot, or not.
Jim Ross jross2@earthlink.net
Digital Innovator - Clinton Township, Michgian

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The technology exists; the delay comes from other industries (think HVAC contractors, home entertainment stores) who can't be bothered to learn to do things a new way. The thermostat becomes a receiver, with wireless mobile thermostats placed around the house. We can do it with computer, why not temperature control, and how expenive can it be? Yet who's offering it?
Linda Willis
Finance - Toronto, Ontario

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The technology exists; the delay comes from other industries (think HVAC contractors, home entertainment stores) who can't be bothered to learn to do things a new way. The thermostat becomes a receiver, with wireless mobile thermostats placed around the house. We can do it with computer, why not temperature control, and how expenive can it be? Yet who's offering it?
Linda Willis
Finance - Toronto, Ontario

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Thanks for your vote! Now you can add your comments here

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This online poll question was first compiled on Fri 22nd Dec 2006 and is maintained by Kevin Ohannessian (you may find other polls by Kevin here)

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