Home sweet electronic home Households get wired for networks, automated chores
Can you picture letting your PC take charge of the lights in your house, or the coffeemaker?
Your computer can even serve as a great housesitter, making your house look lived-in even when no one is home.
Sometimes pictures speak louder than words, so you may want to see for yourself the growing trends in U.S. households with PCs.
What else does our crystal ball show for home computing in 1997? Two emerging areas include DVD, or digital versatile disk, and the rise in faster-than-modem-speed technologies like ISDN and ADSL.
The corporation may be the big testing ground for many advanced computer technologies, but the home market is still the last great frontier. At IBM, we're pushing the boundaries of that frontier by turning the home PC into something more than just an island in the den or extension of the office.
It may sound like something out of "The Jetsons", but our specially equipped Aptivas can be programmed to be a better housekeeper than you are -- they can automate routine household chores and always run like clockwork. We don't want to anthropomorphize computers -- they hate that -- but your PC can help you keep track of your comings and goings better than you do yourself.
And as more people grow accustomed to higher bandwidth in their office computing situations, they're coming to expect and demand it at home. We've got some info on some technologies you're likely to hear much more about in 1997: digital versatile disk (DVD) and the proliferation of ISDN and ADSL in household settings.
