Since the progress is going to grow rapidly, we have to search for new ways of communicating with our environment or controling its elements. The changes are going to be enormous and we still tend to think of them as lienar progression. In order to grasp the scale of change which is going to take place in the next ten years, we have to measure the size of changes which took place from the '60s up till now. That's really close to unimaginable. Not much automatization, no cell phones, no internet, computers in the beginigs. But we are on a path which is lead by the Moore's law which says that ceomputational capacities double every year or the cost of the same device is halved in the next year.
There is a vast amount of research in the field of nanotechnologies. Some of the implementations are already in use and they revolutionize their fields. This ranges from superdry material finishing which doesn't allow any liquid to leave a trace to translucent foils which can dimm themselves by a small charge of electricity which is also produced when the incoming light isn't needed. There is also one branch of research going towards an ultimate material called Nanocubes. The material consists of small cubes the size of approximately 200 nm, which is bigger than a virus but smaller than a bacteria. These cubes are joined together by a chemical bond called nanojunction. Nowdays there are speculations talking about these nanojuctions being programable. That would mean a new material which can change its shape on the visible scale by programable permutations of nanocubes positions. Which would again revolutionize built objects as we know them. They would be able change their shape in real time.
With this in mind let's look at the demands on built environment. In order to change the estimations of climate change, the key element is energy savings. Imagine a room which shrinks when the person isn't using it or is asleep and then inflates and provides enough space for any desired activity. That would save huge amount of energy on heating, lighting and ventilation. There are numerous other implications of such material.
However some issues of this concept arise too. It's apparent, that the production of these nanocubes will have to be really efficient and cheap since there is need for enormous amount of them. The programability of the whole system is also a big unknown. There are also issues which are not discussed. The controlling of such system might become really tricky. Ans again we tend to think that big data in collaboration with artificial intelligence is going to solve everything without any bigger effort. I would like to disagree. There's really unimaginable portion of informations about us already collected and this trend is going to grow rapidly too. But from the facts that we like bananas, hip-hop and our grandfather died yesteday is it unpredictable wheather we would like to open the window to throw a spider out or not, becuse we're suddenly not afaid of them. Even if the database includes our daily routine, daily trajectories and the songs which we listen to and the sites we search for and so on. There are necessarily some moments which cannot be predicted by our past. The heureka moments, new social situations, deep discussions regarding the relationships between two people, moment when we realize something all these and much more cannot be disturbed by a system pop-up asking wheather we would like to refill our milk supply in the fridge, or just the change system does without notification.
