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Technology

The Home as a Node on the Internet 44

Posted by Roblimo from the no-need-to-ever-go-offline dept.
Humility writes "EETimes, a weekly trade magzine for electrical engineers, has a story about the integration of networked computers into domestic residences and artwork. This is a little more far reaching than just wiring up your home with a bunch of MP3 players and speakers. I think it's quite interesting." Fully networked houses on display at The Museum of Modern Art. Sweet! I wonder if this guy's place qualifies? It should.
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The Home as a Node on the Internet More

The Home as a Node on the Internet

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  • This sounds like a Dilbert cube on steroids
  • Ahhh! Why am I being asked for a friggin' password when I try to view the article?


    Bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh, bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh!

  • "No internet in 88"? (Score:5)

    by Tom Christiansen ( 54829 ) <tchrist@perl.com> on Saturday September 18, 1999 @10:23AM (#1674988) Homepage
    "At the time, there was no Internet, the term '24/7' had yet to be coined and it was unheard of to get proprietary information from the client's employer - an investment bank - piped into the home," Daniel Rowen, who designed the apartment with fellow architect Frank Lupo, told EE Times.
    No internet in 88, eh? I suppose Bill Gates and Al Gore hadn't invented it yet.

    Sigh.

    I wonder what that thing I've been on since the very early 80s really is? I'd swear that it was the internet. Has the media truly forgotten where this all came from?

    And by 1988, I certainly had internet from home, including a private link into my employer's inner sanctum of customer and engineering data. And I from there was able to tap into our clients' own private systems as needed when I was doing customer service. Now, it wasn't the clients' business info we were getting, but still.

    Has the mass media ever gotten anything right?

  • This stuff just reminds me of Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. He has a real mind for currents in our culture, and I think that the world is going to be eerily close to his vision of it. Marshall McLuhan, in his book, Understanding Media, says that artists are able to see changes in media...this article, in light of Mr. Stephenson's work, proves that. I think the people who have the best idea of what is going to happen are sci-fi novelists and the geeks who pay attention to them, and keep their nose to the net, as it were.
  • I'm not sure I buy into this, folks. There is a certain point when these things have a habit of being more hyperbole than visionary. I think many of us should sit back, take a deep breath, and think of all those whose work may not be quite so lauded. I'm talking about the folks whose work will have a much more profound effect in the future than this...

    -- Moondog
  • I can't wait for flat screens to drop in price dramatically. This bulky CRT takes up about half my desk... if I could have this display as a flat screen hanging on the wall right behind my desk I would have so much more room and be able to work more effectivly. (Ohh.. a REAL desktop.)

    The other thing flat screens could be used for are terminals around the house. Imagine a flat screen hanging on the wall in your living room. When you're not using it it shows your favorite Monet print, but you could use it to check email quickly or have it display stocks prices, news headlines, etc.

    One in your kitchen could show that Picasso you love, and also be used to display the recipies that you're trying to make.

    Of course, I'm off in a dream world as this is pretty hard to do until prices drop enough. But all those linked to a central computer (running as a multiheaded system?) would be one of the coolest things ever. Plus you could change your artwork fairly easily. A "picture" hanging on your wall could change to a new one from your photoalbum automatically every day.

    And while I'm at it, I want a pony.....
  • I'd crack like so many disgruntled postal workers and take an axe to the circuit box in the basement, (although that would kill me....)
  • Indeed home networks are on the rise. People are beginning to realize that you don't have to have expensive equipment [sun.com] to have a network, nor do you have to be a company to benefit from one. Home networks allow you share resources such as the internet connection [linuxdoc.org] and file and print services [samba.org] with computers of varying platforms such as Win95/98/NT, and Mac. Linux [linux.com] Makes it trivial to set up a router [linuxrouter.org] that might otherwise cost you a bundle.

    --Jamin Philip Gray
    jamin@DoLinux.org

  • Just look around . . you have all that today. Hilton Chicago is offering a PC in their exucutive suites -today-. the best thing is they're tied into a high speed hotel network attached to the net. I have an 'puter by the phone for addresses and scheduling . . as well as my main dual monitor in the den. Flat screen information applicances are here today . . and it's called a PC. Want a sleeker looking unit? get a laptop and hang it on the wall.
  • Speaking of the invention of the internet, you reminded me of the somewhat amusing fact that microsoft.com wasn't registered until 1991. Therefore, 1991 is the official date of the creation of the internet. ;-) (On a side note, apple.com was registered in 1987. Going back even further, mit.edu, for instance, was registered with InterNIC in 1985.)
  • A cool thing about flat screens is that you could get the edges down REALLY thin and then start placing them next to each other.. so that the cost of you desk top would go up linearly in the number pixiles or quadratically in the dimention.. and there would only be a thin line between pannels.

    A cool thing about massivly computerized houses is the opertunity to script things (I use cron for an alarm clock now) and apply AI's. Plus, E will stop complaining about men ot aving any beer in the fridge once it can talk to my fridge.

    Jeff
  • I can see it now.....homes wired to the hilt, including lights, garage door, security system... all maintained by a small, inexpensive box with some sort of free UNIX, commercial UNIX, or MS system running on it. The whole thing can operated through command line interface or though an X-based interface. Wonderful!

    But what if your home security is as weak as most corporate network security? Next thing you know, your home system is infected with a virus (especially if it's MS based)......some cracker uses a buffer overflow exploit to get root, allowing for easy break-in, or worse, the haunted house from Hell...your house gets ping-flooded and shuts down for as long as it takes for your friendly neighborhood HomeOnTheNet(tm) representative to come by and reboot...some stupid script kiddie uses a downloaded executible to open the bathroom/bedroom curtains when your self/wife/sister/daughter (or husband/son/brother) is nekkid...there are all kinds of analogues to stupid computer security goofs. What are you gonna do, call in an expert to keep it secure? A lot of the so-called experts can't keep boxes secure today, as the archives on attrition.org should demonstrate.

    What will save most people is the fact that their lives are just too boring to pay attention to. As for everyone else, they'll have to be on their toes, all the time, to avoid far more annoying cyberpranks than ever before. At minimum they'll need a secure firewall; if they're a celebrity, they'll need to hire a trusted system administrator who's an expert in maintaining secure systems -- and those aren't exactly easy to find. All in all, it makes me wonder who would want their home system on Internet in the first place.............

  • scary (Score:1)

    by Zog ( 12506 )
    For some reason, i don't like the idea of computers becoming this dominant in people's lives. What would one do if their house was robbed?
    Also, on the amusing side (although possibly true), this is setting up the world to be taken over by computers as soon as the AI people get so advanced that a bug in the attitude module gets people eaten by interactive trash cans, etc. Sounds fun!!!

    -Brian

    DynDNS [stech.net] - Dynamic DNS. Source Code.

  • This sounds pretty interesting, even if it isn't something new. It's nice to see artisitc design go with the engineering side.

    But how many people can afford it? Sure the price of this type of equipment has come down in recent years but I still wouldn't expect to see it in someone's house unless they had a lot of money or a strong technical backround.

    As much as I like technology I don't think I'd want it present in EVERY single thing I do in my house. Too much wasted electricity. Sometimes I like to be old fashioned and read a book made out of paper...
  • Instead of the usual family picture in the hallway, will all of the LCD panels read:

    "d00d! y3r h0u53 B3 0wn3d by th3 Oreo Cr3w!"

  • M$ (Score:1)

    by BSD_Beck ( 83982 )
    I heard Bill Gates and his goonies already have plans for a paperless bathroom. Did you know a single DVD-ROM drive can store more data than 3,924,492 rolls of toilet paper? That's enough TP to clean up the crap that M$ releases in an entire year, and almost enough to TP Bill's entire house!


    Bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh, bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh!

  • Re:Linux makes it happen... (Score:3)

    by the_tsi ( 19767 ) on Saturday September 18, 1999 @11:54AM (#1675004)
    As much as I love linux and credit it for all sorts of things, there are better deals out there than using linux as a router. Granted, I'm sitting on a rh6 box right now that's behind a lrp firewall connected to the internet, there are dedicated boxes for about $100-150 you can get that have three ethernet ports and a modem built in and that do NAT in hardware. It's very slick. It's what I use to connect Mom and Dad to the 'net. They can share a line and both surf at the same time. As great as linux would be for this, if there's ever a power failure, and I'm not around to fix the thing, there's no problem -- since it doesn't have any filesystems mounted, it's just an XXXk eeprom, it just starts back up where it left off. A linux box would take 30 seconds to boot up, get to the fsck failure and wait for input. At which point my parents would be stranded without internet access till I came home from school.

    Plus, these boxes are about the size of a mini hub and take the same amount of power. Even though I can get a pretty darn small 486 case, it's still going to be sucking a bit of juice and some serious closet real estate.

    I've had a network in my house since circa 1991 (thanks, Invisible Software!) and as extensively as I use linux, it doesn't have THAT much to do with the home networking revolution. If anything, I credit the OS vendors moving networking into the OS (gag...).

    When I had to install personal netware on top of all our machines running DOS 4 and 5 with Win3.1, it was a non-trivial task to get files shared. When Win95 allowed point-and-click network browsing with almost ZERO configuration, it became alot easier. Of course, Macs have had this since very early on (and kudos to apple for integrating network hardware, however incompatible with the rest of the world ).

    Linux *will* however play an important role once it makes plug-and-play, near-zero-configuration, point-and-click setup the norm. It's close, but not quite.

    This isn't a pro-MS post. It's just taming your Linux over-advocacy. Sorry, but nothing personal. I'll never run anything but Linux on my home network servers (well, that free solaris deal is looking better and better....)

    -Chris

  • ... (Score:3)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Saturday September 18, 1999 @11:56AM (#1675005)
    The Automated Home of the Future will not be complete until my toaster runs linux! Now if you'll excuse me, my oven just BSOD'd and incinerated my cassarole... stupid driver conflicts.. I knew I shouldn't have installed ActiveLights 2003.

    --
  • Yeah.. just wonderful. I s'pose my fridge will have been taken over by the pop'n fresh man too. We won't even discuss what happened to the toilet...

    --
  • Thanks for pointing out other solutions. :) I wasn't trying over-advocate Linux. Just pointing out how trivial it is to set Linux up as a router. Many people already have old 486 boxe(s) that they don't really use, or old macs, so it would not cost them a thing, except for maybe the prices of a few network cards, to set up a linux router.

    --Jamin Philip Gray
    jamin@DoLinux.org

  • Make sure you don't have video cameras and microphones in there...

    _NSAKEY and Back Orifice and all that stuff would certainly make your lives less private.
  • I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I'm never offline. My home is equiped with a nice CM, Linux firewall (that also hosts IMAP centralised mail, junkbuster/socks proxy, and a few websites), and LAN connected up. Add in X.10 stuff, and you have my happy dream home :-)
  • I saw this [icepick.com] about a year ago. I don't know how useful it is , but it's good to hold your attention for a minute or two. More homes like this could make for some interesting "how we live" studies.

  • We're here...sort of... (Score:3)

    by Ricochet ( 16874 ) on Saturday September 18, 1999 @01:13PM (#1675012) Homepage
    There are quite a few of us out there playing with such technology right now. We are experimenting and some have kept it within limits (to keep the SO happy and live within budgets) but we are playing with the technology. So far I have control of various lighting (using X10) and I have expermental I/O (I/O = switches, variable resistors, LEDS and DMMs) that I can control. I am able to monitor the weather and pull back information from the internet (news, weather, etc). I'm also able to post various info from my systems to the internet, though I must wisely choose what to post as too much info can be dangerous in the wrong hands. And I have voice synthesis output for certain info. Others have more elaborate systems (Bruce Winter's Mr.E House (MH) [home.net] for example).

    There are problems with this technology; cost, reliability, accuracy, redundancy and standards are not really up to expected consumer qualities. But for the most part they do work. Some of the fancier stuff such as the mirror with the built in display is pricey. But thanks to new technologies such as ethernet on a chip, smaller microcontrollers can be used for control and monitoring. Of course you can still use these devices without the network hook ups. This technology will help get the pricing down and allow more items to be centrally controlled by the MCP.

    Now this of course begs the question do we really want so much being controlled for us? Or is the energy management and possible conviences worth it? Those are questions I can't yet answer. I don't really put a whole lot of faith in technology and sometimes prefer the old ways of doing certain things. Now ain't that a real kick in the pants.

    --
    Linux Home Automation - Neil Cherry - ncherry@home.net [mailto]
    http://members.home.net/ncherry [home.net] (Text only)
    http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/lig htsey/52 [fortunecity.com] (Graphics)

  • Sometimes I like to be old fashioned and read a book made out of paper...


    In that case/sense, I'm very old-fashioned in that I enjoy reading books made of paper more than electronic ones, I'd rather _not_ have my [networked] house networked also to the internet.. 24/7.. b/c I'd rather protect myself. Plus, I'd rather make myself work and get up and go do things, rather than automate everything I can by using the network..

    Then again, that's just me.
  • Check out http://www.aviodigital.com.

    It's based on the "Trio" research project done at Interval Research in Palo Alto (I know, 'cause I worked on that project for a year and a half).

    Interval Research is a good 7 to 10 years ahead of the curve on this.

  • Yes, I just received the shipment from Sun two days ago. Without even reading a manual, I fired up the installation scripts and it went through right to the end, configuring all my hardware and setting everything up to my liking.

    It's not Linux, but it's really great, too.
  • We won't even discuss what happened to the toilet...

    Little guy on a raft?

    Bite My Ziff, Davis!

    ======
    "Cyberspace scared me so bad I downloaded in my pants." --- Buddy Jellison

  • If Bill Trader's tale is any indication, you'll be at work from the moment you wake up. Kinda cool at first, but I think it'll get tiring after a while.

    Yes there is a danger that work will become 7x24, but it is up to the individuals to take back the control (I've found this easier said than done so I am guilty as charged). It is also up to the corporations to establish policies that keep the balance of personal life and business needs. If business is allowed to take too much control then a revolt will occur and business can not afford to have that happen.
  • My home IS "node"(.com) on the internet - and was (and still is) "node" on the UUCP flat address space before the domain addressing coup. That it is a "good" four-letter sitename should give you some idea how long it's been around.

    "Node" was my second choice - I'd wanted "home", so I could have the email address "@home". B-) I missed getting "home" by a few days - during the several weeks it took the sysadmin of my first UUCP connection to get me the registration form.

  • well. i live in a 'networked house.' it is a just built house that was not a modem, it is a custom house. i didn't actually build it, but i did make the network run after it was all done.
    im just going to explain to you what sort of neat stuff we have intergrated into this house. first off there is a vantage 'house control system.' now ive never used it but i am told you can connect a computer to the vantage computer, via cat5 cable that is sticking out of it, and program the lights/heat/ac/oven/anything electronical to do whatever you want. for example at 3:30 in the morning all of the lights except for the bedrooms turn off, because we tend to leave a lot of lights on. we dont have normal lightswitches, they are more like buttons, and they have red lights on then when they are on. now that is all pretty easy to do i suppose, just not very common.
    of course we have it all wired for a LAN. there are rj-45 jacks under every phone jack through-out the entire house. they all connect in a room, where the hub and gateway is. i specifically even got rj-45 jacks put in in all of the bathrooms, so phear :P
    now i see wiring rj-45 as common as a rj-12 phone jack to become common practice as the cablemodem/dsl wave strikes. the whole remote-control-house thing isnt gonna take off nearly as much because quite frankly, who the hell really needs it?
    overall, i find the vantage system a little annoying, my lights used to turn off in the middle of the night at random times, just because of glitches in the setup. it may be useful to the power bill, and the light switches are cool, but overall i feel a vantage house control type system is not neccisary.
    the LAN wiring is great. i totally love taking the laptop and connecting to my network anywhere in the house, and the cable situation was definetly a lot easier than it could have been.
    one last thing is im still trying to interface with the house control system. it is a Vantage system, i assume that is just the brand. there is a little black box with a on/off switch that says Vantage Q-Modem, and there is a cat5 cable labled Vantage connection. as far as i can tell it does nothing. obviously i dont have the right software, or possibly some sort of propietary network interface card is needed. who knows. anyone who has worked with such a system i invite you to contact me, because i want to have control of my house!

    hacking the houses in utah-
    Tyler
    disc0re@home.com
  • I thought that .uucp still existed but only for the hams. My email (above) address reflects one of my old .uucp addresses. At least what we learned during those day helped us in today's world. ;-)

    Actually my home automation started with a 3b1 and a Heath Kit X10 interface. Things have changed since then.

    --
    Linux Home Automation - Neil Cherry - ncherry@home.net [mailto]
    http://members.home.net/ncherry [home.net] (Text only)
    http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/lig htsey/52 [fortunecity.com] (Graphics)

  • In my business deadlines are a major part of my job so it's always noticable when slacking off. My problem is controlling the number of hours and the hours of the day when I work. I can easily take 2 hours at lunch as I will still have 10 hours of work to finish by the dealine.
  • I gave up the work from home bit... not enough self discipline (and I'm happy to admit it).

    Deadlines and spliffs is no combination!!



    Buckets,

    pompomtom
  • How about this for a solution? One computer dedicated for your net-surfing. Another one, stand-alone, to do all the other things, like lighting, heating, alarms, unfreezing your fridge... Of course, you still have to decide which computer to do what, and how (and if) they need to talk to each other... just a thought... As for me, I would only use it if I can install it myself. Furthermore, I will have one room that have no computer in it :)

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