House – A Place You Put Your Favorite Technology

Ever stop and think that technology changes the way we think about our own house? Have you yet admitted that George Carlin was right when he said “a house is just a place to put your stuff”? Ever notice that more and more in today’s high tech world that stuff the house is arranged around is computers, large screen displays, projectors, and expensive kitchen appliances?

Having just moved a very nice 52” Sony DLP out of our living room to our basement, because we realized it was just too much of a good thing for that small space, I just realized that almost every room in the house is designed around a certain piece of “technology stuff”.

For example that 52” monster is now in the basement, in a bedroom actually. Of course the bed and the Lazy Boy in the room are sitting in just the right spot to have a great view of the TV set. So when you walk in you of course see a bed, a desk, a chair and an amazingly big TV that is obviously saying to the bed: “I don’t care what they call this room you are just here so that kid can be comfortable when he looks at me!”.

There is one more finished room in the basement and it is at the present time our computer room. There are two high end gaming PC’s set up in there and soon it will hold a third. This room is struggling as my wife finds the basement chilly no matter the time of year. This is a big problem for me as I love my PC and want to spend more time with it. This is another example of how the room is just there for the stuff. Because in this case the stuff is great, but the room is cold, so the room needs to get its act together, get a little warmer, and tell my wife that her stuff misses her.

Having just bought a new shiny stainless steel GE Refrigerator and stove it’s of course obvious that even the kitchen is arranged around these giant machines that are really a sort of “food technology stuff”. Do any amount of kitchen research and you will have to agree that a good layout depends on where that stuff is. Something about a “work triangle”, I don’t know, I just stare at the pictures of all the shiny stuff.

My last thought takes me back to that living room. That one room that now lacks that one piece of technology to give it a purpose. I can’t help but wonder about a ceiling mounted 1080p projector to save space and I have even considered a projector rental to make sure that’s the right choice of stuff for the room. But at this point it’s a toss up between the projector and a smaller HD LCD or Plasma TV.

So the living room stuff is my next project. But it’s also a project that I imagine will never end. For as long as we live in houses we will fill them with stuff, we will obsess over which room is the best choice for which stuff, and what is the best stuff to put in them.