Home of the Future In 10 Years? Maybe Less
Behold the Future! Photo Courtesy of DISPLAX
Some of the products I’ve read about lately have covered technologies that are hastening my predictions for the house of tomorrow to fruition. There are two that I have found noteworthy. The first is the Toshiba Satellite E205 laptop, which I saw on an Engadget review. It’s a laptop that wirelessly sends video to a television using an included Netgear Push2TV box connected to the television’s HDMI or component inputs. That device is portable (though not yet as portable as I predicted) and will transmit video directly to another screen. It’s not quite as flexible as what I described either, but I wasn’t predicting this to be the year that the house of the future would arrive. I still have 10 years left for that prediction.
Then there was the announcement that really excited me, the DISPLAX Multitouch Technology (direct link to presskit) made by DISPLAX of Braga, Portugal. This is a technology that turns flat or curved nonconductive surfaces, such as glass, wood or plastic into interactive multitouch surfaces using a thinner than paper, nanowire embedded polymer film. The technology currently supports up to 16 inputs and is scalable from 18 cm up to 3m. (7 inches up to 9.84 feet) It’s also incredibly light. To give an idea of the weight, a 50 inch screen would weigh 300cm or about two thirds of a pound.
Being that light and flexible, the DISPLAX technology could easily be integrated into a table top or even onto the wooden armrest of a couch or applied to a section of wall. There are a lot of possibilities. I can see it or one similar to it being used to overlay an interface onto furniture rather than having independent computer interfaces that we have to interact with. I’m hoping there will eventually be an option to buy and install our own film rather than buying furniture with one already included. I’d hate to have to get rid of a perfectly good table to step into the future. Of course, I’d do it if I had to.
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This is very impressing! I particularly liked the DISPLAX Multitouch Technology coming from Braga, Portugal. It sounds awesome! Way to go PORTUGAL!!! This could help the Portuguese Economy.