Home › #Photography › I WANT AN AUTONOMOUS HOUSE! Marilyn Armstrong

I WANT AN AUTONOMOUS HOUSE! Marilyn Armstrong

By on • ( 45 )

Autonomous house, autonomous life!

The self-driving vehicle is on the way. It’s on the news and in the news. A few accidents. One death. But considering the number of accidents just backing out of a driveway in suburbia, that’s pretty good.

I can actually see a day coming when Robert Heinlein’s vision will have arrived. Not exactly as he predicted, but close enough for folk music.

We could definitely use a self-driving car because neither one of us wants to drive anywhere, but we are driving a not-yet-paid-for second-hand 2012 Jeep Patriot, so a self-driving car doesn’t look likely to appear for us.

Autonomous cars would be great. Finally, we could blame everything on computers. Nothing would be anyone’s fault. The manufacturer’s of colliding cars could duke it out in court and all we’d have to do is recover from being slammed by a 40-foot moving van. Anyway, by then, medicine will be free. I know this because we are all moving in the direction of more freedom for all Americans.

We aren’t? Did I mis-hear the news again?

However much an autonomous self-driving vehicle would solve many issues, an autonomous, self-repairing, self-cleaning house would really do the job! If a tile on the roof gets damaged, the technology will grow another in its place. You’ll never know it happened. The furnace, will operate on hydrogen drawn from well-water and will never need filling. Rugs will be permanently free of dog hair, grit, pollen, and mud.

Pipes would never clog.

Of course, this presumes that we continue to get rain and have wells and aquifers. And we don’t turn into a charred desert or return to the Cretaceous period and have to live in trees.

Mostly, I want the autonomous house where everything gets fixed and I don’t have to figure out how to pay for it or even know I have a problem.

This whole “take care of your house” and “please don’t back into anything” is getting old.

I don’t think ANY of us should be driving. We are too distracted. Overly busy with phones, not to mention worries, conversations, and work. There are too many cars. Everywhere. Even where there aren’t a lot of people, there are still too many cars.

MAKE IT ALL AUTONOMOUS.

Anything you can run without needing me to do it, I’m a BIG yes. Please do not send me a bill.

Why is it always about MONEY?

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Categories: #Photography, Computers, Home, Money, satire and parody, Sci Fi - Fantasy - Time Travel

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45 replies

  1. swo8
    06/03/2018 • 13:05

    I heard a review and interview with the author of the book The Death of Homo Economicus by Peter Fleming. It’s all about the money. You can listen to the interview on the abc.ca radio 1 The Sunday Edition with host Michael Enright.
    Leslie

    Like

  2. choosingmyperspective
    06/03/2018 • 11:49

    was that one photo of the “door into summer”?

    Like

  3. draliman
    06/03/2018 • 01:53

    We can already turn appliances and lights on and off, get music played and books read and so on with voice commands so it’s on its way! It’ll still cost money though I bet – stuff that doesn’t really need fixing or filling will get done and you’ll get presented with a bill on the wall screen when you get home…

    Like

    • Marilyn Armstrong
      06/03/2018 • 02:08

      I know it’s on its way, but I won’t be alive when most people have it. I can’t afford a car made in the past 5 years. I can’t afford prescriptions for asthma. I think the house that does it all for you is well outside my financial range. And maybe that’s just as well. I don’t want to live in a world where most of what happens is done by machinery. Except cleaning, cooking, and repairing the house, of course.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. trentpmcd
    06/02/2018 • 20:17

    I’m ready for the autonomous house, as long as I get to choose which parts to turn off and on and when… Hey, I was still using that glass! It’s clean, really!

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  5. Taswegian1957
    06/02/2018 • 19:13

    Autonomous house, great idea! No more trying to find a tradesman, work out a day for him to come and budget the repair. No more asking friends to change lightbulbs for me because I can’t stand on a ladder in the middle of the room. I’m for that.
    Self driving cars would be great for me as a non driver I’d finally be free to go where I want when I want but I have to agree that roads full of self driving cars and human driven cars would not work because people don’t drive like robots. That was one of the fears that held me back from driving, fear of not being able to predict what others would do and poor judgememt of speeds and distances.
    I don’t reallly trust GPS alone though. The idea of just being taken somewhere without knowing whether or not I’m going the right way doesn’t appeal. I like a good old fashioned map.

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    • Marilyn Armstrong
      06/02/2018 • 20:04

      It’s the lack of control that makes most people very nervous about self-driving cars, especially if you mix them with drivers. Heinlein had a better idea. Roads that move. You enter the road, get in the slot. The car wakes you at your exit. I liked that one better.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. omniclassic
    06/02/2018 • 17:24

    Picking just one of your fantasy-laden everything-will-be-OK topics “autonomous self-driving vehicles.” When they first started testing them down here in AZ I questioned their success. The simple truth is that the infrastructure necessary to ensure proper control just does NOT exist. They are relying on satellites which are as flawed as your GPS units will tell you. Even GPS depends on a human to interpret what it’s attempting to decide for you and are useful ONLY as rough guides to mostly general locations. Under these circumstances, “autonomous” just doesn’t cut it. I can’t tell you how many mistakes mine has made and I update it all the time. A complex maze of sensors is needed to make “autonomous self-driving vehicles” a reality. It will take many years to install and few of us will be around when it happens.

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    • Marilyn Armstrong
      06/02/2018 • 20:05

      I never completely trust my GPS. I also print directions … and I have maps. They are best in the suburbs, useless in Boston, and pretty worthless when you get far out in the country, too.

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      • omniclassic
        06/02/2018 • 23:41

        Actually it’s far out in the country where I found the GPS to be most useful. Especially where there is a minimum of major highways. Under those circumstances, the GPS takes the path of least resistance which is what a logical person would do anyway. So yeah, useless by default. Maps? what are those? You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve crossed this country without map one. And, NO, I didn’t wet my finger and hold it up in the air, or navigate by the stars either. There are road signs that indicate N, S, E, and West and there is always the Sun which never fails to tell you which way.., unless it’s a cloud covered day 🙂

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        • Marilyn Armstrong
          06/03/2018 • 00:30

          We were doing okay with ours until we got into northern Maine and it said “No instruction from here” and it didn’t even have a local map of the area. Apparently, the mountains of Maine are not on any map.

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  7. Donnalee
    06/02/2018 • 15:58

    I’d settle for plumbing that works as it is supposed to, and heating that works as it is supposed to, and I’d be okay with that for now.

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    • Marilyn Armstrong
      06/02/2018 • 20:06

      Yeah, but every time I look at a picture of my house, I get more morose looking at the condition of the windows. It’s just a matter of time. It’s all falling apart. The plumbing works and the heat works, but the heating unit is old and not getting younger. Its time will come, too and our “new” roof is almost 19 years old now.

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      • Donnalee
        06/03/2018 • 22:49

        Best wishes with it–it’s like a body really, needing maintenance but not quite the same if we replace every bit of it!

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        • Marilyn Armstrong
          06/03/2018 • 23:25

          Right now, but any day now, they will have replacement parts for everything. Or maybe they’ll just move our brains to younger bodies.

          Liked by 1 person

          • Donnalee
            06/03/2018 • 23:27

            That would be interesting, but I might only like it if it were a clone, but then again I would prefer this old model vehicle anyhow–

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            • Marilyn Armstrong
              06/03/2018 • 23:36

              I’ve got two replacement valves in my heart, a pacemaker, two replacement breasts, and a long piece of bone in my tibia. I’ve heard that a replacement kidney is just about ready to roll. If you take away my implants, I’m dead … so I’ll go with the replacements.

              Liked by 1 person

              • Donnalee
                06/03/2018 • 23:51

                Technology can be great. I have simply had do-overs, in that this body has been killed a couple-few times as we’ve discussed, but by golly it takes a licking and keeps on ticking–knock on wood!

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  8. angloswiss
    06/02/2018 • 15:07

    Brilliant – Marilyn for President (although I believe there are no problems in the White House).

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    • Marilyn Armstrong
      06/02/2018 • 15:09

      You must be listening to the same news I’m not listening to 🙂 I don’t want to run anything. I just want an angry mob so I can storm something. Anything. Town Hall, if all else fails. Not that there’s anyone IN town hall these days. The building is empty and you have to do everything on line. But it looks good in pictures.

      Liked by 1 person

  9. Fandango
    06/02/2018 • 15:00

    I would definitely sign up for an autonomous, self-fixing house. Let’s start up a Go Fund Me campaign to pay for its development.

    (But I’m still not a fan of self-driving cars.)

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  10. curioussteph
    06/02/2018 • 14:52

    depends on which channel’s new you’re mis-hearing! wink, wink, nudge, nudge. One of the earliest Macs we had at my house had a very early synthesized voice that would comment when something went wrong: “Its not my fault” in a boris and natasha type russian accent. Its been a tagline at my house ever since. And I can just imagine the cacophony of not my faults going on in this brave new world.

    Liked by 1 person