Technology Change The Windows In Your Home?

Technology marches on relentlessly and anyone who has been around for the last few years should be able to see just how rapidly it is currently changing the world around us currently.

Thanks to Moore’s law, we’re seeing technology develop at an exponential rate and no aspect of our lives is safe. It’s not just your mobile phone and your computer you see that are dictated by technology, it’s also the car you drive and the home you live in.

For now tech is something we choose to use and that we carry with us, but soon it is going to permeate our very environment to a huge extent and will be something that we use almost passively. It will sink into the background, but it will always be there making various tasks easier.

This will be particularly apparent around the home where digital devices are already becoming ubiquitous. Read on to see what the future has in store for your home and even for the windows you keep around your house.

Future store for your home and even for the windows

Nanotechnology

As we get further into the meat of this article we’ll see how our windows and other aspects of our home are likely to start feeling very space age and working the way that we have come to expect thanks from science fiction.

The most immediate changes we will see however will be more practical and less ‘in your face’. These will be simple tweaks to the efficiency and performance of the window as a window. You’re likely to see them become better at insulating and keeping in the heat for instance, but more impressive will be the utilisation of nanotechnology which is already starting to take place.

Simply, by coating a window with nanotech, it’s possible to completely seal it against grime and water, so that you could throw an entire vat of mud over the window and see not a single drop remain on the glass. This could potentially put window cleaners out of business, but for the rest of us it means cleaner glass and less work.

Augmented Reality

Perhaps the most obvious way that windows might become more high tech in the future is through the addition of augmented reality software. Augmented reality is the term used to describe technology that ‘superimposes’ digital information over what you can see.

Google Glass does this by getting you to wear glasses that display that information, but we could quite easily see a time when this works on our windows by using them as transparent monitors.

For instance then, you might be able to look outside and have your window tell you the temperature and the wind direction (it could do that with some tiny sensors or by getting information online).

Alternatively you might see someone come up to the glass and have your window identify who they are, or record footage if they don’t know them (great for security).

Monitors

At the same time you could also have your window be used as a monitor/touch interface that doesn’t use augmented reality. As a Speculation: High Tech Uses For Windows As Monitors!

One use for this might be gaming. Imagine playing a computer game with someone in another room through the window such as checkers. Alternatively another use might simply be to change the look and feel of your room by switching the view. Imagine getting bored of looking out the window at the garden and being able to suddenly switch that to a view of Niagra Falls complete with sound effects. And if you could get your walls to join in on this (Microsoft’s IllumiRoom comes close to doing that) then you might never need to go on holiday again…

Other Functions

There are many other functions too that we might one day see in our windows that go beyond turning them into fancy computers. We might see windows that can generate their own heat soon for instance (in the same way that car windows do), windows that can respond to the light outside (this already exists but isn’t commonplace) to change the wavelength they let in and more.

The moral of this story is that technological development doesn’t just apply to your computer. Stay tuned because a lot is likely to change around the home and every other part of your life.