Whenever futurists sketched daily life after the robots, they drew silver jumpsuits, food pills, and homes that looked like airport lounges. But the more I think about it, the less likely that seems. The real future is not about speeding up everything until it’s frictionless. It’s about slowing down, because suddenly we can afford to. Not financially – temporally.
Continue reading “Forward to the Past”
Category: housing
No More Piles
When I first wrote about domestic robots in Three-Armed Spot, I argued that we didn’t need humanoid butlers, but a practical, Spot-like creature with three arms to do the dirty work. I still believe that. But let’s imagine we’ve already got it. What changes then?
The first thing that disappears is the pile. For centuries, piles have structured our homes: the laundry pile in the basket, the dishes pile in the sink, the stack of papers and unopened letters by the front door. We pile things because we batch work. Continue reading “No More Piles”
Demolish, Rebuild, Repeat: The Future of Home Sweet Home
The concept of robots transforming the way we build and live is as exciting as it is transformative. House-building robots, such as the 3D printers already being deployed, show the potential to revolutionise construction. Yet, while these machines are undeniably impressive, they often rely on concrete, a material with a heavy carbon footprint. Concrete production accounts for a significant proportion of global CO₂ emissions, primarily due to the energy-intensive process of producing cement. This reliance poses a challenge: how can we embrace the convenience and efficiency of these technologies while aligning them with a sustainable vision for the future?
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Counterurbanisation
It’s hard to believe that just five years ago, many of us were living through a worldwide lockdown, trying to make sense of new ways of working and living. Back then, I believed the pandemic would dramatically and permanently accelerate the move away from big cities in favor of smaller towns and the countryside – something often referred to as counterurbanisation. In hindsight, my predictions weren’t entirely off the mark, but I was definitely too optimistic about how quickly these changes would reshape our world.
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