The smart home is becoming much more than a house with smart appliances – it's a doorway to a community and social future closer than most of us realise.
Who says? Well, for one, Professor John Barrett, head of Academic Studies at the Nimbus Centre at the Cork Institute of Technology in Ireland in an interview with Forbes magazine late last year.
Asked to express the smart home in a wider context, he said: "I guess the current perception of the smart home is one of gadgets…home automation…all sorts of individual gadgets that can do one thing or another. But I don't think that is the long-term evolution.
"It's not just a home of gadgets. It's a home that's embedded in a wider smart community…a wider concept…for the long-term evolution of smart home technology."
Samsung Electronics, the world's largest IT, consumer electronics and chip maker, agree; that's why they are investing millions upon millions of dollars into not just creating an integrated network of smart appliances but the digital platforms upon which homes will be built…and, even more, a whole way of life.
Samsung has made a public promise that, by 2020, only a year and a half away, all its home devices will not only be connected but intelligent, powered by artificial intelligence and controlled through smartphones. They are nearly there already – 90 per cent of their line-up of fridges, washing machines, dryers, TVs, you name it, is connected today.
Samsung Family Hub fridges, for example, can alert homeowners when essential foodstuffs, like milk, are needed and order them from a supplier.
The smart home will be controlled by a seamless, single touchpoint like Samsung's SmartThings app and the ambitious digital personal assistant Bixby – which many believe will become the preferred operating system for home technology.
Over the next decades, new generations of that same technology and others will enable community advances previously seen only in sci-fi movies.
Samsung SmartThings' Future Living Report takes a credible look at how that way of life could arise within 100 years, elements of which will probably be with us a lot faster than that.
It paints a picture of a world heading for major community change driven by technology – in the same way the Internet started as a (rather slow) global data network which became an indispensable part of our work, leisure and personal lives.
"Like the Internet before it, its evolution is set to reach a phenomenal speed," the report says. "This technology [smart gadgets inside a smart home] is just the beginning in a movement that will see further interconnectivity between the physical and digital worlds as, in the first instance, we become able to control physical elements of our lives via our smartphone devices."
The Future Living Report shows how the world's urban population rose from 34 per cent of the entire global population in 1960 to 54 per cent in 2014 – reflecting the planet's urban drift. The pressure of those numbers will mean a smart home will have to be smart in more ways than interconnected appliances.
Living space in cities will become scarce, so technology will power buildings and interiors to evolve into hyper-flexible spaces, the report says: "Walls, floors and ceilings will have embedded technology to allow them to change position – like making the bedroom smaller and the living room larger when entertaining guests."
New generation software will allow shape-changing exteriors of buildings too – like terraces which open up to receive drones arriving or close when temperatures soar; retracting when too cold.
Inside the home, advances in augmented reality and projection mapping mean homes' blank walls will function as backdrops for projections seen only by the inhabitants. They could include 3D sculptures or other "virtual decoration" like mirroring or traditional wallpaper designs or scenes from places around the world.
3D printing, already a reality, will become commonplace, with homeowners purchasing and downloading furniture and homeware designs and using 3D printers to customise them to exact needs in terms of shape, size and colour.
Recycling and hydroponics will be fully integrated in homes with wastes creating fuel and electricity while advances in hydroponics will see people growing food at home, including fruit, fish and shellfish. Growing surfaces inside and outside the home will also insulate and beautify, with architecture resonating more with nature.
Advances in building materials will see carbon nanotubes cement composite, 16 times stronger than concrete, become common; diamond nanothreads will replace steel cables with 100 times the resistance and about one-sixth the weight.
Whole cities, taller than existing structures, will extend high above ground in vertical mega-structures, complete with public and private spaces, housing connected by aerial highways and elevated pedestrian streets with shops, bars, cafes and parks. Other advances will also see the emergence of "earthscrapers", like the one planned for Mexico City – 65 storeys descending 300m underground.
The smart home isn't, as Professor Barrett said, just a collection of gadgets. It's the beginning of a technology revolution "destined to wash over us and spill into larger communities and countries", according to Samsung's report.
That broader future is arriving – fast.
# Next time – we look at the latest iteration of the smart house, how it will work and who Bixby is.