Byte by Bite

The virtual reality of a wired house

by Marv Dealy

Published April 2, 2004

In some of my more feverish moments I've been contemplating the really, really wired house that Bill and Melinda Gates have built in Seattle.

News accounts have told us that the $97 million house -- built partly underground so that it appears to be smaller than the 66,000 square feet it really is -- has so much technology built into it that mere mortals such as you and me might well be too frightened to even walk into the front door.

Demo house
Now comes news of a "demo house" set up in the parking lot of the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show in -- where else -- Las Vegas. Bill Gates, in his traditional keynote speech at CES spoke of Microsoft's determined effort to see to it that every room in your house is working from a central computer, allowing your DVD movie (or whatever) to follow you as you move from room to room.

While we might expect the "house of the future" to have a plasma display in every room, are we really ready for the Internet in the paperless bathroom? It's true -- TotoUSA's Washlet "washes and dries you, offers four temperatures for heated seats and has a built-in air purifier," this according to an account from Wired's Steve Friess (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,61844,00.html). Learn more at Toto's site -- http://www.totousa.com/toto/totohome.asp.

Virtual viewing
Back to the Gates' lakeside "cottage." If you haven't visited the Gates' home -- I know I haven't -- you might enjoy some pictures taken from Lake Washington (http://www.goehner.com/gates.htm) or perhaps you'd like to take the "tour" provided by US News & World Reports (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/tech/billgate/gates.htm). Still more pictures can be found at http://www.itmweb.com/f101601.htm or at the website of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the architectural firm who, together with James Cutler Architects, designed the house (http://www.bcj.com/). At the BCJ.com site, look for the navigation to "projects" then look for the link to "residential" then to "Gates residential compound." The aerial shot is really quite stunning.

The virtual tour mentioned above from US News & World Reports utilizes an artist's drawing of the house, and you can click on various areas to learn more about the pool house, the gate house, the grand stairway or even how many bathrooms the 1900 square foot guest house contains.

Back to my fevered moments -- the whole Gates house is supposed to be so wired that you can have your favorite music or art or temperature "follow you" around the house as you move about. I'm not sure whether your favorite sandwich will follow you around, as well.

Naturally, this leads me to think about what can go wrong when the computers crash, and we know from as far back as 2001: A Space Odyssey (explained fully at http://www.kubrick2001.com/2001.html -- warning, this is a really, really long Flash presentation) that computers will crash, likely endangering us Popsicle-bodied folks.

In my fever I picture that one day the Gates' butler goes innocently about his business when "poof" the computer takes a lurch to the extreme right and imprisons the poor old man in a room and begins playing Led Zepplin's Stairway to Heaven at loud volume in an endless loop until the butler goes entirely mad. The house then continues to entrap and zap anyone who enters, starting with the UPS man.

At this point, it's entirely probable that Stephen King will have to take over and write the story of the retaking of the house.

Computer speed
In other news you can use, Intel has announced that it is going to quit using gigahertz numbers to sell its processors. I applaud this move, as it has always been true that the real speed of a computer is better measured by its slowest component, the bus speed, or whatever else is capable of slowing it down. And even then, someone who is a heavy graphic user will judge the machine speed quite differently than an online gamer.

It is true that consumers want a "system" whereby they can compare the performance of computers, and the computer industry has fed that appetite since the 1980s by using the microprocessors' clock speed to rate the computing horsepower. By dropping the megahertz naming system, unfortunately, the industry has opened up a new box full of naming and numbering problems.

AMD, for example, uses a four-digit number on their new Athlon processors. Intel's plan is to name future products with a three-digit number. How are consumers supposed to compare those easily? To make it more fun, Apple (who buys IBM chips) calls one chip a G5 while IBM calls it a PowerPC 970 chip.

I expect industry groups will eventually come up with a number system that is supposed to compare apples and oranges. But I'm not sure of the benefit to the consumer, ultimately. After all, you don't buy a vehicle solely on the basis of the speed rating of the tires with which it is equipped from the factory. In the case of a portable computer, a consumer's choice might well come down to which one has the longest-lasting battery.

For now, I'm thinking that consumers will need to be even more educated before they buy that new computer, or they may well buy less or more than they need, and might pay too much when buying more than they needed.

Marv Dealy is a lifelong computer enthusiast and businessman in Tuolumne County. Reach him by e-mail at marv.dealy@throck.com