The Smart Home: Green + Wired
The Museum of Science and Industry’s futuristic utopian residence, the 2,500-square- foot Smart Home, is straight out of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The house’s self-sustaining digital nerve center turns on lights, plays music, adjusts temperatures, powers the museum and calls you when your plants need watering. Museum staff assure us the Smart Home isn’t sentient, but Dave thought that about the HAL 9000. Luckily, this automation system foregoes homicidal tendencies. Instead it promotes a 100 percent environmentally green lifestyle; any pollution or wastefulness “can only be attributed to human error.” The Smart Home shuts down January 4, so you still have a couple months to plug in.
5700 S. Lake Shore
(773)684-1414
msichicago.org
Best of Chicago 2008