An Ordinary Day February 21, 2008
I wake up to the warmth and soft light emitted from my pillow. It gradually starts mimicking morning sunlight, gently caressing my face. I check the time and date: it’s the twenty-first of March, 2020 at 11:15 AM. Saturday! Weekend, it’s about time. I get up out of bed and as I walk away from the bedroom my pillow dims and calibrates itself to my Sunday morning setting.
As I move from the bedroom into the bathroom, the bathroom lighting emits a soothing light to improve my laid-back Saturday morning experience. I take a leak; what a relief. However, me taking a leak unchained an invisible process taking place right inside the urinal. Instant analysis of my urine is sent to the seamlessly integrated computing system running my home. As I move away from the toilet to the sink, an embedded User Interface in the mirror lights up: the visual items are styled according to my bathroom’s interior design, featuring soft light tones and chrome elements. This User Interface is the way I communicate with this particular part of the house; a graphical representation requiring point-and-select actions enable me to focus and wake my mind after my full night’s sleep. The bathroom floor measured my weight; I’m 0.7 kilograms above my optimal BMI. The system suggests a meal to get me back to that optimal weight, based on the content of my refrigerator. What I don’t see is that the system included info to select foods with a high sodium content; the awkward process of my urine analysis probably detected that my body needs a little salt. With a simple gesture, a swipe of my hand in the direction of the kitchen, I confirm the selection of the nutrition by the system and leave my bathroom. As I leave, the pressure-sensitive floor detects my absence, and turns off the ambient lighting as well as my health-reporting bathroom system.
