Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 06/88 - checked

June 1988

You can imagine it, can't you. There you sit in your Cray Supercomputer, sipping a glass of exquisitely coloured but slightly rancid 'St Emilion-style' wine substitute. The Cray doesn't look like a Cray, of course. It looks much more like the half-crazed attempts of a drunken French carpenter at making a Louis XIV armchair.

You think you might like to change your position in the chair, just a bit, and the awesome power built into this self-assembled, MFI special with Wire-It-Yourself RS232 port, instantaneously readjusts the 25 electric motors which control the position of the chair. At last you are comfortable, and able to contemplate dinner.

Speaking slowly, so that the kitchen can understand, one just can't get good kitchens these days, can one?, you order. In something just a little less than a flash, as I said one can't get good kitchens these days, the furniture moves, and a plastic Jacobean-Lord-Of-The-Manor style dining table appears through the floor. Your MFI/Cray armchair rolls towards the table, parking, for some inexplicable reason, just too far away.

The robots rush in with silvered plastic salvers, and Just-Like-Mother-Used-To-Use plastic-replica paper plates containing what you ordered, succulent-styled MacDonald's flavoured Beef Stroganoff...and chips.

You look expectantly at the robot proffering you the unopened salver. For some reason it would seem to be refusing to serve you as programmed. It is also standing an annoying six inches too far away. If something doesn't happen soon, you are simply going to have to get up from the chair and serve yourself.

Nothing happens soon, or at all.

With the deep sigh of the truly frustrated you move, take the lid off the salver and find.......Tandoori cornflakes?

"Sh.........." you exclaim, uncharacteristically of course, "some b...person has hacked into the house again."

Could it happen? Well, maybe.

You see, they are at it again. By 'they' I mean the individuals and companies which feel that the fully computerised, automated house is just around the corner.

This is, in practice, one of the great hoary icons which gets trotted out every ten years or so, though I remain firmly convinced that it will never actually happen. If it ever does, remind me then that I said now it will be the time I moved to somewhere sensible, like Antarctica.

As the ten years are up just about now, it is no surprise to me that the automated house buffs are at it again. The first time I remember seeing a 'practical demonstration' was on BBC TV back in the mid-sixties. Someone showed what could be achieved using lots and lots of minicomputers doing various 'things' around the house. It didn't amount to much, and the presenter admitted it would cost a fortune.

Next came the 'micro-revolution', remember that? Several companies had a go at making automated houses, with varying degrees of success (usually next to zero in practical, living, terms). But the ideas were closer to a workable realisation, and the cost far less injurious. The scope was, however, limited and limiting.

There is, for example, the famous story of a computer consultant who had lots of 'auto-goodies' at home, including a front door lock based on speech recognition. This worked fine until he came home one night, somewhat 'tired and emotional'. Needless to say, the front door refused point blank to recognise his voice, so he couldn't get in.

Now, they are at it again. There is even an EEC-backed Eureka project aimed at developing the European-standard for Integrated Home Systems, or IHS. (It must be serious if they have got so far as to give it initials). Companies like Thorn EMI, Philips, GEC, Electrolux and Zanussi are working together to appliance the science of home networks and domestic computerising.

Soon, if they have their way, you will be able to control absolutely everything in the home by speech recognition systems, ordering food from the Zanussi fridge, shifting it to the Electrolux cooker, while adjusting your GEC central heating and watching your Philips TV change channels on demand and listening to your Thorn hi fi.

Boring.

Not only that, but you will be able to order things up while outside, using the telephone. And this is where the fun starts, for if you can get into the system, so can someone else. It is young and handsome Chris Curry, he who once was half of Acorn, who has pointed out this obvious fact: automated homes are a tempting, too tempting a target for the hacker.

I have only ever heard of one computer security system that proved unbreakable, and that only came about because the programmer who wrote it was drunk at the time, and didn't know what he was doing anyway. It is a fairly safe bet however, that no matter how clever anyone thinks their security system is, someone else will be able to hack it. Given that home systems will have to be cheap for them to sell at all (especially in this country) that will not leave too much leeway for classy security.

And just imagine what could happen if a hacker got into your home? The scenario at the beginning would be as nothing. Door locks could be sprung, bank account data 'manipulated', your central heating left on full while you are away on your summer holidays... the list is endless, and far more frightening than finding tandooried cornflakes is the only thing your house will serve you.

No, a little bit of strategically applied technology is all very well in the home environment, but not automation. Homes are about people (though houses need not be) and people and technology don't actually mix very well, despite what you may have heard to the contrary.

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