Treeshepherd
Wood Member
Where is economic growth going to come from over the next 20 years? The easy answer to that question has to do with the internet of things (machines that communicate with machines). Smart appliances, smart clothes, smart cars, smart homes where everything in the home communicates with everything else. I jokingly sometimes refer to the smart toilet of the future which chemically analyses your waste and makes recommendations to your food delivery app. We're going to be bombarded with information quantifying every aspect of our life, or rather our gadgets will be. A standard 'gadget' in the Google ecosystem will be a domestic robot.
It's natural to predict that in the near-future you'll live in a Google/Android home, or an Apple home. Google recently purchased Nest, a company known for making the learning thermostat. This is one of Google's plays as it competes for the market of near-future smart homes. I'm forecasting that the new addition to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California may become the testing ground for the future of housing.
The new 1.1 million acre Googleplex campus will include 5,000 units of housing. I can only assume that these housing units will incorporate the latest smart-home technology. All automobile traffic will occur underground, presumably with plenty of EV charging stations. Free Google buses will bring people in to work from off-campus (San Jose, SF, East Bay). Being right on the Bay, they'll probably have a Google ferry. The surface of the campus is exclusively designed for walking and biking. Edible landscaping will be planted throughout. Google has purchased the Altamont Pass wind facility to be redesigned with bird-friendly Google turbines to power the campus. The Googleplex campuses that exist already are outfitted with 1.6 mW of solar power.
I have mixed feelings about where Google is taking the future of the American home. Ostensibly, I'm in favor of alternative transportation, yards to farms, rooftops to kilowatts, and cutting waste (in this case being achieved via smart-home technology).
But, in order to achieve noble goals, or just to be trendy, are my future grandchildren going to end up living as drones on Google and Apple plantations?
It's natural to predict that in the near-future you'll live in a Google/Android home, or an Apple home. Google recently purchased Nest, a company known for making the learning thermostat. This is one of Google's plays as it competes for the market of near-future smart homes. I'm forecasting that the new addition to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California may become the testing ground for the future of housing.
The new 1.1 million acre Googleplex campus will include 5,000 units of housing. I can only assume that these housing units will incorporate the latest smart-home technology. All automobile traffic will occur underground, presumably with plenty of EV charging stations. Free Google buses will bring people in to work from off-campus (San Jose, SF, East Bay). Being right on the Bay, they'll probably have a Google ferry. The surface of the campus is exclusively designed for walking and biking. Edible landscaping will be planted throughout. Google has purchased the Altamont Pass wind facility to be redesigned with bird-friendly Google turbines to power the campus. The Googleplex campuses that exist already are outfitted with 1.6 mW of solar power.
I have mixed feelings about where Google is taking the future of the American home. Ostensibly, I'm in favor of alternative transportation, yards to farms, rooftops to kilowatts, and cutting waste (in this case being achieved via smart-home technology).
But, in order to achieve noble goals, or just to be trendy, are my future grandchildren going to end up living as drones on Google and Apple plantations?
