Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Sleeping in the future.

In Tokyo the Japanese company Panasonic has built the experimental “Eco & Ud House” within the complex of Panasonic Centre Tokyo on the artificial island of Odaiba.

“Eco & Ud House”.
“Eco” stands for “in harmony with the global environment” and “Ud” stands for “Universal Design”.

The “Eco Ud House” is a real house made in a way Panasonic believes a house in the future will look like.

This morning the “Eco Ud House” was visited, by special appointment, and although there is a limitation on what can be reported about this fascinating place, because exclusivity is with others than this blog, it can be revealed that a bed in the future will massage you before to go to sleep. And the reading light is greenish because that colour does not stop the accumulation of melatonin in the brains, needed for a good night of sleep.
That is the good news.

But more scaring to learn is that in the future, according to Panasonic, a couple does not sleep in one cosy bed anymore.
In the house of the future the bedroom contains two single beds.
Also, we are scheduled to have only one child and surprisingly they predict that grandmother will also live with us.

The “Eco & Ud House” is extremely interesting because it demonstrates how technicians and inventors think and plan to surround people of the future with what is now advanced technology but who pay very little attention to sociological progression.

Another example of this lack of social prediction capability is that in the “Eco & Ud House” the woman is planned to have her own space that is a rather lost, dark corner next to the kitchen where she is planned to iron and repair the clothes. However, her husband has two extra rooms.
One is his entertainment room. Equipped with double doors and therefore totally sound proof where he can watch his DVD’s with super surround sound while the door is locked by his personal access code. We may wonder what he is exactly watching there.
Second room for him is his office. Equipped with the most interactive and sophisticated electronics available for conference meetings and other business activities.

It is predicted that the man is having this room, not the woman, and therefore he is planned to be the one in the future who works and brings in the money while his wife is ironing in her dark niche and probably making a cup oftea for Grandma while awaiting the child to come home from school.

The beautiful guide explaining the “Eco & Ud House” was Tomomi Kanetaka and when asked if she planned to be behind the ironing board while her husband was watching whatever in his locked entertainment room she accepted to have tea together on Saturday.

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