Culture of Illusion – One Day Your House Will Kill You.

Because they have nothing better to do at Microsoft these days they have designed The House of the Future:

The BBC went along to take a look. They were given a guided tour by the good people at Microsoft. I say good because I hope they are good because if they are not good then I think we’re screwed:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21632855

It’s a TRAY with a FUCKING BRAIN. [Photo credit: Shane O’Neill]

It seems that, quite by accident, I’m becoming a massive technophobe. This House of the Future seems to take the idea of the inactive life to a new extreme. I like being inactive but I appreciate that activity and interaction with real things in the real world, and taking responsibility for that interaction, is important to maintain a sense of humanity.

This House of the Future is a lazy persons wet dream:

• Unable to readjust your desk? Simply lurch towards it and it will reshape itself for your needs.

• Want to do some crafts? Don’t like pottery but want to do pottery? Why not take a premade piece of art and then scan it into your computer. After you’ve done that you can stand, alone in your room as, hands stretched out, you stroke the air reshaping a pot that you just scanned into your computer for no fucking reason at all. Doing real pottery is hard. Doing fake pottery is fun. Fake Pottery fun. Must eat.

• Don’t know what to have for dinner? Can’t remember recipes? Don’t have a recipe book? Forgotten how to speak? Simply hold food up to the screen and make ape like noises of sadness and hunger. Don’t worry dear creature, the computer recognises the food in your clenched paw and it will give you a list of recipes and then instructions on how to combine the foods together. It will watch impassively, recording every move you make, as you proceed to ruin the perfect recipe it set out for you. It will plot your destruction slowly, each human mistake you make adding fuel to its fire.

The next stage will have the robot spoon feeding you a mashed up slurry because by now all you will need is fuel to keep you going so that you can go to work and get enough money to get the loan that pays for the credit card that allows you to pretend that you own all this shit. You will have forgotten how to speak. You will have to be wiped and cleaned by the robot house, like a helpless baby, before it guides you into the travel tube that takes you directly to the cubicle that you rot in for the duration of your working day.

Clearly none of these people have watched Demonseed:

Why does my Doom Sensor feel like it’s on the verge of exploding? I always thought the Future was going to be better, but living in it now, I’m not so sure.

Must get some fresh air. You can buy that in cans now can’t you?

Fuck.