Smart Homes: Past, Present and Future

Abstract

A “smart home” can be defined as a residence equipped with computing and information technology which anticipates and responds to the needs of the occupants, working to promote their comfort, convenience, security and entertainment through the management of technology within the home and connections to the world beyond. The full-blown concept of the smart home is the acme of domestic technology we can envisage at present. The concept, at one time only encountered in science fiction, has moved closer to realisation over the last ten years. Although the gap between reality and fantasy is still wide, it is important that we start to give proper consideration to the implications this technology holds for the way we will live in our homes in the future. To date, the limited amount of research into smart home that has been carried out has been primarily focused on the technical possibilities. As a social scientist myself, I am concerned that the personal and social consequences of smart home technology are largely being overlooked. (A notable exception is the work of Mynatt and colleagues at the Everyday Computing Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology, e.g. Mynatt et al., 2001; Siio et al., 2002; Voida and Mynatt, 2002.) The home is a quintessential “human” place, with all the intricacies that entails. As I hope to persuade you in this chapter, the smart home is far too sensitive and important a sphere for social scientists to ignore any longer. If we take up the challenge which the smart home presents, we can make a significant contribution – the evolution of the technology itself will be shaped by our discussion and research. With this chapter I am aiming to provide the motivation and the background for social scientists to become involved with the emerging phenomenon of the smart home. The chapter is divided into three sections looking at the past, the present and the future of the smart home – at the historical context which brought about the emergence of the 11