ILLUSTRATOR: CHAD HAGEN WRITERS: ELLY PARSONS, JONATHAN BELL, EMMA MOORE
After a decade languishing on consumer
tech’s back porch, the smart home
has started to enjoy mainstream success.
Voice-activated butler bots such as
Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit
chime in 39 million American homes,
while Ring, a video-activated doorbell,
has been snapped up by Amazon for $1bn.
But has good tech turned fad? Tech
firms are embedding remote-controlled
capabilities into everything, from ludicrous
‘Laundroids’ to help fold your clothes
to toilets such as Kohler’s ‘Numi’, which
monitors the pipes in a little too much
detail. Meanwhile, potentially worrisome
tech that exists to siphon data from our
day-to-day lives comes cloaked in a stylish
shell – like the Yves Béhar-designed Hive
View security system – so it doesn’t feel
like an AI alien has invaded your home.
Inevitably, we’ll keep welcoming ever
brighter AI into our living rooms. But if
we fear smart homes will make us stupid,
we could heed Elon Musk and the late
Stephen Hawking, and seek out domestic
design that’s a little bit dumber.The gap between spa and medical tourism
is closing. Filling it are destinations that
have all the somnolent soundscapes and
blond wood features we expect from spa
destinations, but with the added promise
of a medically backed reboot. Instead of
simply offering detox programmes, they
are now using state-of-the-art methods
to analyse body and mind to create tailor-
made preventative programmes.
This coincides with a growing interest
in solo, transformative travel. Using the
most up-to-date diagnostics – including
DNA analysis, professional sports
methods such as NeuroCom testing,
and counselling – establishments
such as Waldhotel Health & Medical
Excellence in Switzerland, the design-
driven Lanserhof Tegernsee in Germany
and Portugal’s picturesque Vilalara
Longevity Thalassa & Medical Spa are
making the medical makeover desirable.
In parallel, the medically grounded
emotional boot camp (or ‘break-up
break’) is a growing category, offered,
for example, at Thailand’s Kamalaya.NEXT STOP
Technology is set to reroute
our lives, from domestic AI to
the daily commute and luxury
medical breaksAt the 2018 Geneva Motor Show, Renault
exhibited the EZ-GO concept ‘robo-taxi’,
designed for future cities filled with
perpetually moving, non-personal transport
devices, shared by many and capable
of autonomous door-to-door travel.
Right now, the auto industry feels
beleaguered, despite annual global sales
nudging 100 million units, and ideas
such as the EZ-GO attempt to blend ride-
on-demand culture with the certainty of
a familiar badge. Car companies are looking
to fully join the ride-sharing economy.
The downside of this is that we’ll be
making a potentially irreversible transition
from using a public facility to a private
one. For example, if autonomous vehicles
manage to dodge the many obstacles
in their path to public embrace, one
casualty might be the traditional city-wide
transit network. Instead, our streets will
be filled with a cacophony of brands, all
vying for our daily commutes. Tomorrow’s
tech might be tantalisingly close, but
it doesn’t pose a straightforward route
for urban transit.SMART HOMES MADE EASY PRIVATE TRANSPORT NETWORKS MEDICAL HOLIDAY PLANS∑ 121
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