This week I am going to take my expensive, shiny chrome and matt-black CD player, carry it out of my home, find the nearest charity shop and give it away.
It’s not broken, it has never sounded better, but it will go the way of my Filofax, my PDA, my first Nokia mobile phone and my Sony Walkman. Why am I junking my fancy kit? When it comes to all things “gadge”, even a confirmed technophobe like me can see that times are changing. High technology, once the preserve of teenage boys and overweight men called Alan, is moving out of the closet and into the living room, and I need to keep up. And that means getting rid of my CD player.
Futurists have been peddling notions of domestic digital nirvana for years. The truth is, the closest most of us have got to high-tech domesticity is a Goblin Teasmade, but this time it’s different. I know because I’ve lived it.
For the past few weeks I have acted as a techno guinea pig, using some of the newest home technology. The good news is it mostly works. The even better news is that it can help even the messiest householder give their home a makeover worthy of a Wallpaper* photo shoot.
The new high-tech revolution is all down to that black box which most of us long ago banished to a dusty space under a desk. A generation after it was invented, the home computer is creeping out from the spare room and settling into the living room, where it is becoming what techie types call a “hub”.
Bang & Olufsen and IBM helped to fix up a hub of my own but most of the software is easy enough to install. I started by setting up a wireless network. My computer can now communicate with my television and my stereo as well as my printer. Next, I downloaded my CDs on to the hard drive of my computer and then did the same with the photos stored on my digital camera.
Now when I switch on my computer, the desktop has an electronic copy of the remote control for my television and my stereo. Next to it are my music playlists and icons that control my electronic photos. By clicking on the buttons and icons I can play CDs, turn on the television, change channels, control the volume, display digital photos on my TV and print out documents — without leaving my desk.
This might sound techno heaven for the terminally lazy but, for anybody interested in chucking out the chintz — and any other unwanted clutter — it is a giant leap forward. A taste for the technological no longer means your house looking like a big-budget teenage boy’s bedroom.
With my CDs now on the hard drive of my computer, I can put my collection in storage and give away my CD player. The machine and my scattershot collection of CDs no longer cover my cabinets but I can still listen to music for as long as I like.
With wireless, I can work anywhere — even on the terrace. I don’t need to run a cable from my laptop to my printer. My Hewlett-Packard printer is hidden in a cupboard, removing another ugly bit of kit from view. The result is that my spare room is now a spare room again, not a desk covered with a linguine of cables.
To top it all off, my bathroom now has a computer-controlled plasma screen. For soaps. Overall, the look and feel is more John Pawson than Noel’s House Party.
But don’t just take my word for it. One man who is moving into one of the most high-tech minimalist pads in London is Stephen Phillips, a currency trader. The 43-year-old has spent £50,000 installing the latest computer equipment, hi-fi, speakers and plasma screens at his £1.6m home in Chelsea.
From the keyboard and computer screen in his basement study, he can control any of the dozen flat-screen televisions in his house, play music in every room, view photographs and play DVDs. Separate remote controls in each room mean he can change TV programmes or CDs without having to go back to the study.
Stephen and his wife Cecilia love the way the technology has transformed the look of their home. “My office computer acts like one giant remote control for TV, music, the internet and photographs,” he says. “It sounds like the study should look like one big recording studio or the bridge of the Starship Enterprise but — even though I say so myself — it looks very stylish. All you see is a keyboard, a flat computer screen and a flat-screen TV on the wall with speakers in the corner.
“It’s the same in every other room in the house. There are no monstrous TV boxes, no stacks of CDs and DVDs, and no cables, which look awful. We suddenly have less clutter and more space, and the modern furniture we have fits in well with the technology.
“The days of a CD player with CDs and a boxy TV, with a VCR and DVD, in every room with dozens of remote controls are — thankfully — over.”
Jonathan Cluts, Microsoft’s head of consumer prototyping and strategy, who is developing a similar wireless home entertainment system, agrees. “The era of stand-alone domestic devices is at an end,” he says. “Soon you will not be able — or willing — to buy anything that does not somehow communicate with the other technological devices in your home.”
As with all new technology, not everything is glitch-free. Wireless is fine if you live in a house. Some flat-owners complain that, if too many residents in one building install wireless, the different networks “compete” with each other, interfering with connections. And truly fashionable domestic tech-heads still regard having a computer in the living room as naff.
But they will come round in the end — or simply hide their laptops behind this season’s must-have lacquered ebony Zanotta floating shelf system. After living in a networked, 64-bit, “killer app” future, I know one thing is certain. The machines will win in the end. Resistance is futile.
Clued-up and clutter-free
Get wireless devices. There are plenty of wi-fi hardware and software packages that deliver music, TV pictures, video and digital photographs from your PC to your stereo and TV. Some, such as Bang & Olufsen, offer dedicated systems that work with their own products. Others, such as Philips Streamium, integrate with existing equipment via a wireless multimedia link device, from £179.99. It also has products with built-in wireless connection, costing from £119 for the PC Audio Stereo System to £1,119 for the Wi-Fi 23in LCD TV
