The New York Times looks inside the house of tomorrow, which is staying in touch with its owner via Twitter:
So it is with Tom Coates’s San Francisco home, which live-tweets the movements of its many gadgets. The account, bearing the dignified title @HouseofCoates, updates the world, and the house’s more than 1,000 followers, on the lighting in the kitchen, the temperature in the sitting room and the frequency with which Mr. Coates weighs himself. For a time, it also tweeted the result. “I have stopped doing that recently because I’ve put on a ton of weight,” he said.
A self-described early adopter, Mr. Coates, 41, became obsessed with the idea of web-connected sensors several years ago, and outfitted his home with more than he can count. He has light switches that are controlled by his iPhone, a device that measures whether his plants need water, a motion sensor that informs him, via Twitter, anytime someone unexpectedly enters the sitting room, and, of course, that tweeting scale.
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More than just giving him peace of mind, Mr. Coates said, having a tweeting house has fundamentally altered the way he conceives of his home. “This may seem really weird,” he said, “but I feel like it’s deepened my emotional relationship with my house.” He says hello out loud when he gets back from work, and said cleaning the house had become an act of nurture. “It’s sort of weirdly pleasant to come home and feel like when you tidy up, you’re caring for a thing.”
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