BBC iPlayer video

So, how's it look to you? Looks pretty swish, though I wonder how accurate it is.

For perspective, here's two vids of a similar subject in the 1950's. Clicky!

With the 50's house:

sonic wave dishwasher,

irradiated food cabnet.....

didn't catch (maybe due to cancer!)

But the central heating climate control did catch on though and the "push button phone"

The kitchen has weird white nipply things on the walls.

So, how are they going to integrate all this into existing houses? Or is everything just gonna get torn down and replaced?

I want a cocoon bed! And I'm sure Dev would love that, but I don't agree with TV and internet in there.

The house of our future looks very high tech. A bit stark. Did they do away with paint in the future?

Re: the 50's - sure did love plastic back then, didn't we?

In the future, paint and pigment will be banned as expressions of emotion and freedom.

Gah!

Tell you one thing that won't be in my house of the future, those naff cilindrical shower heads that stick out of the bath like that, they are useless and get water everywhere!

But yeah that house didn't seem very futuristic to me, it was almost identical to one I saw on a 1980's program, excepting the quality of the touch screens and the mirrors,

But seriously the 80's one had voice recognition etc which is much better that actually writing things onto a touch screen.

Also alot of it's features exist in many homes today, just watch grand designs!

Life in 2008

Some of these weren't too far off.

the link above is way too far ahead for most technology and infrastructure yet way behind on social change.....

"The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest"

I wouldn't say *too* far ahead. They have ovens now that will keep food cold until a set time and then start to heat. Kind of like you can put your bread machine on a delay start. You can put the oven on a delay start (and it refrigerates in the meantime.)

But yeah, behind in social change.

Oh sorry I just meant the article: the aircars, underwater cities and holidays to the moon.....

why do they always put in aircars?

because air cars would be ACE!

although I am a big fan of the matter transporter myself. Seriously, that's my third wish!

The modern Belgian one was just as weirdly socially conservative as the old one - assuming people would always live in nuclear units, and so on. And stuff like the cocoon bed, although very nice, is just an updated version of the four-poster, which was also intended to be a pocket of warmth in a cool house. And all that button-pushing to get news and weather in the bathroom! Much easier and nicer to have Radio 4 burbling away in the background.

The House of the Future is an IKEA showroom wired with Apple technology?

And no Man-Cave??

quote:

Originally posted by DoomBunneh:
The House of the Future is an IKEA showroom wired with Apple technology?

And no Man-Cave??

I think that IKEA and Scandinavian design aesthetic in general are heavily influenced by the futurists from the early 20th century. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy there. (Happened in the 1950s too when Art Deco came back imitating the 1920s futurists.)

I came back to this thread because all the predictions I've seen were obsessed with our stuff, but not with us. People are absent from the equation.

For example, (and this is what inspired this thought) no one predicted extreme athletics.
Who would have predicted that the Marathon, once the most extreme of extreme sports, would be something that lots of people do now? The truly extreme athletes do 100+ mile mega-marathons or Ironman (which itself is increasingly common).
Mount Everest has turned into Disneyland.
We do backflips on motorcycles now. And bicycles. And skis.
Olympic sport training is so refined that events are won and lost by hundredths of seconds; winners in the 100m swimming events now take no breaths at all for the duration of the sprint to keep from losing time.

And the mention of extreme sports makes me think of Parkour, also called Free Running.

Here's a video. The editing is a bit over the top. I know two people that do this on a regular basis.

quote:

Originally posted by ladykatza:
And the mention of extreme sports makes me think of Parkour, also called Free Running.

Here's a video. The editing is a bit over the top. I know two people that do this on a regular basis.

The first time I heard of parkour I was completely dumbfounded. All that shit I did as a kid had a name??? I thought it was just showing off.

Well, it didn't have a name until some guy in France made it famous. Silly French people.