South Korea Says "We Want Smart Homes Now!"
Someone in South Korea has obviously rented nineties teen movie Clueless and decided that the computerised outfit selector Alicia Silverstone uses would be a great addition for the smart-home of the future. Only this being South Korea, they've decided not to bother waiting for the future to come along, and built more than 100 of them now. Electronics company LG has stepped up and used a networking technology called HomeNet, which uses the ring-main as a communication pathway, to link up everything from TVs and HiFi through climate control to laundry.
A touchscreen displays a map of the apartment, and selecting different rooms and then appliances gives full control, even going so far as to indicate electricity consumption and display video messages from neighbours and online friends. In the future, waterproof RFID chips will be sewn into clothes so that you can track which of your favourite items are in the wash and what sort of outfit you can put together with what's left in the wardrobe.
Construction deals are already in place to build 30,000 more of these high-tech flats by 2008, driving food, clothing and technology manufacturers to consider integrating the networking adaptors and RFID chips the system is based around into their goods, lest they get left behind.