The future needs to be back-ported.

Quiet Babylon

Haunted by Design – Buildings That Protest 2

Wednesday August 19, 2009 || by Tim Maly

Part of a series: Buildings That Protest

I can’t get the idea of Buildings That Protest out of my mind.

Recap: This is the realization that with the growth of smart homes and internet of things technology, we are envisioning a future where buildings no longer stand mute, but become active participants in shaping our behaviour.

Halloween 2008
Creative Commons License photo credit: vissago

Infused with Ghosts

They are haunted structures, populated by machine spirits. Some of the spirits will be part of the architect’s vision, or the builder’s, or government code. Others will be after-market add-ons, mandated by utility companies or offered by interior-decoration gurus. Some will be installed by the people living there. DIY renovators, house hackers. Some will be malevolent. Black-hat digital haunters, wall-paper spammers, zombie-house botnets.

There will be things running behind the walls and they are actually going to be called “house daemons”.

Haunted houses that you can patch.

I was trying think of a neologism for modifying your house in software. With the idea of hacking it up, I looked up the etymology of renovation. “1432, from renovacyoun: ’spiritual rebirth’”. Perfect.

Where will the control panels go? Will they be embedded in house shrines? Will we rebuild roman larariums? What is the Feng Shui of house spirits that you can commune with through the command line?

All of: Buildings That Protest

  1. Buildings That Protest 1
  2. Haunted by Design – Buildings That Protest 2 ((YOU ARE HERE))
  3. On a Grand Scale – Buildings That Protest 3
  4. Would We Make Them? – Buildings That Protest 4
  5. Databar – Buildings That Protest 5
  6. Broken Superpowers – Buildings That Protest 6
Filed under: architecture, speculation ||
  • I'm not sure if you've ever heard of Warhammer 40k, but the story is interesting. In the far, far future, we've lost much of the knowledge and understanding of technology. "How machines work" is explained as a literal ghost living inside of every bit of tech, and that's what makes it work.

    There's also the standard "Ghost in the Shell" reference to this, too.

    I like the similarity your ideas have to these ones.
  • You are absolutely right about the Warhammer 40k world. Especially the God-Emperor who has been literally turned into a kind of living radio-beacon. Thanks for reminding me about WH40k, I think there are a lot of really great ideas to mine out of that universe.

    For Ghost in the Shell, I want to spend some time thinking about the Tachikomas as these partially distributed intelligences. Mores on that to come too, I'm sure...
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Quiet Babylon is by Tim Maly and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License 2007-2010. Just about all of the photographs are Creative Commons Images from flickr. Click on them to link back to their creators. Theme based on Fluid Solution theme ported to Wordpress by Kaushal Sheth, design by Arcsin. Hilariously, I got rid of the "fluid" part of the fluid solution and have since hacked away a lot of the rest of the original design. But that's not the creator's fault. It's a great theme.