You may have marveled over the mechanical arm that hoisted cartoon character George Jetson out of bed in the morning and plopped him in the shower. But don`t expect that kind of convenience in your lifetime.
High-tech houses – outfitted with giant videophone screens, robotic kitchens and doors that whisk open in the blink of an eye – have been the stuff of science fiction tales for decades.
And with all the advances in personal computers, cellular telephones and fiber-optic technology, those promises would appear to be ever closer to reality.
But while technology has made some inroads in the average American home, housing experts point out that most home buyers actually are pretty conservative – if not downright technophobic – when it comes to new technology.
In other words, some experts say, consumers may not want all that home technology has to offer.
”The majority of people buy a home with the next buyer in mind,” said Bill Lurz, senior editor for Professional Builder magazine.
”The average stay in a home is about five years and when you know you`re going to put your house on the market in a few years, you`re not going to want to go out on a limb with something that you might get stuck with when you`re trying to sell.”
Some of the technology that George Jetson would recognize is already available. Computerized home management systems made by Japanese and American companies came on the market in the mid-1980s.
With such systems, homeowners can pre-program thermostats in individual rooms or set the security system to let a pool caretaker in the back door at a predetermined time. Some systems are hooked into the telephone lines, meaning a homeowner can turn the air conditioning off before leaving town but turn it on with a phone call before returning home.
But computerized home management systems have not caught on with the home buying public, experts say, largely because the conveniences have not been worth the cost – anywhere from $1,500 to more than $15,000.
”A lot of these systems are just sophisticated versions of the Clapper,” said Bill Weaver, a real estate professor at the University of Central Florida. The Clapper is a device that turns electric devices on and off at the sound of a hand clap.
”Technology is nice, but what the home building industry really ought to be doing is finding out how to make housing more accessible and more affordable to a greater percentage of the population,” Weaver said. ”The greatest percentage of the population out there needs shelter they can afford, not lights popping on as they walk in a room.”
Computerized home management systems usually are found only in houses priced at more than $200,000, said Don Evans, president of the Evans Group, an Orlando residential architectural firm.
”You find these systems offered only in expensive custom homes that are built on speculation and even then the builders offer them as a marketing gimmick,” Evans said. ”You rarely see these systems offered as a standard item because they just aren`t what people are looking for these days.”
But other experts are more optimistic.
Barry Berkus of Berkus Group Architects, a nationally recognized residential architecture firm in Santa Barbara, Calif., said home technology will become more widespread as it becomes more user-friendly.
”In the mid-1980s, I think we found that we were serving technology. The gadget freaks were happy with all the little goodies that had come out, but a lot of what we saw was difficult to understand,” Berkus said. ”By the end of the 1990s, I think we`re going to find a way to make technology serve us.”
Most consumers shy away from technology that is too complicated, Berkus said.
”The videocassette recorder is a perfect example. It`s a piece of fairly recent technology that has come into the home over the past 10 years. But most people use their VCR only to play back movies. They don`t use the machine`s full capabilities because they don`t understand how to program the machine,” Berkus said. ”Half of the nation out there has little blinking 12s on their VCR because they can`t figure out how to set the clock.”
