OTHER TECH

Meet Your Future Sure, most of us have been connecting things for years. We connect our DVD players to receivers and the receivers to speakers. But those don't qualify as "connected" devices - or at least not very smart ones - because there's no two-way exchange of data between them. More promisingly, we connect things to our computers. At the office, you might share a printer with several colleagues - a hookup that qualifies as connectivity, but one even the Flintstones would find boring.

Connectivity, for our purposes, is technology that integrates the Internet, computers, and audio/video gear and media in your home. A house that's not connected is a nightmare to work in. You have to rely on sneakernet to move files, and you can work at your PC in the den but can't easily take the computer out on the patio.

But connectivity is becoming just as important for the 75% of our lives spent not working. Who wouldn't want technology at home that speeds up chores to create more free time - and, more important, that improves the quality of that free time?

Many of the pieces are already available. Most homes have Internet access, computers, and A/V systems. Achieving connectivity means adding some specialized components and linking the components we already have to augment the ways we use them. For example, you can put a timer on a thermostat to turn up the heat before you get out of bed in the morning, and you can have another fire up the coffeemaker. But in a connected house, you wouldn't need to run around setting individual timers: you'd set everything from one master control, and it could turn on your favorite music or morning TV news show at the same time.

Your scale of the future might advise that you're a few pounds over fighting trim and suggest you have yogurt instead of hash browns. Meanwhile, the refrigerator checks its contents, notes that you're low on milk and yogurt, and orders them from the store. That night, you might ask to see a movie that's as romantic as Cold Mountain, but has the whimsy of Big Fish. The system suggests some titles, and you pick one that's pay-for-view.

While you're watching the movie, your cellphone tells you someone is at the door. From your phone, you turn on the porch light and see that it's your daughter's date. You send her an instant message (IM) telling her to get offline. (While her date waits, you make sure he's suitable by running a quick background check.) After the movie, you share some vacation photos with your brother in Hawaii and invite him to look at some videos on your server. As you get ready for bed, you have the audio system pick some relaxing music from the server and play it for you as you move throughout the house, ending in the bedroom. It slowly lowers the volume and dims the lights as you fall asleep.

Sound too much like the Jetsons? Think again. Many people are already living this digital life, or parts of it. A friend of mine works wirelessly in one part of his Wi-Fi-equipped house while his wife works in another. Rather than yell back and forth, they IM each other. The habit has become so ingrained that they IM each other while working with their laptops in bed together. And they keep an eye on their baby's bedroom via a Webcam using a picture in the corner of their computer screens.