Meet Grace, She'll Be Running Your Home

The door to the future is unexpectedly plain, a bare wood surface indistinguishable from thousands of others in Microsoft's functional headquarters. It gives no clue to the flights of fancy hidden inside.

Step through it and you are immersed in a world of virtual wallpaper, intelligent fridges, talking recipe books, wardrobes that dispense fashion advice and the entire human catalogue of art, film and literature on demand.

Microsoft built the 'home of the future' in Redmond, near Seattle. Its policy is that all the items in the home should take no longer than six years to become affordable to consumers. A measure of scepticism does not go amiss, for the 'home of the future's' record as an oracle is mixed. When it opened in 1994, it featured interactive TV, a forerunner of today's growing broadband television services, and 'audio on demand', which anticipated consumers' ability to get any song streamed into their home, now a reality thanks to websites such as iTunes.

Less prophetic was a touch-screen fridge, an idea which went unrealised because while fridges are expected to last between 10 and 15 years, their digital element becomes dated in about three. Earlier versions of the home - it is updated every two years - were opened by iris scans rather than keys and contained miniature cameras in every room, but neither concept was in evidence when The Observer toured last week.

The home looks affluent but not particularly space age. Cutting-edge technology has been grafted on, while trying to remain unobtrusive: speech recognition, tiny radio frequency tags and ultra-thin moving light displays combine with wireless internet.

Conducting the tour, Jonathan Cluts, Microsoft's director of 'strategic prototyping', unlocked the door with his Pin-protected phone, stepped into the lobby and adjusted the lighting with a rotating switch. Then he spoke to the switch. 'Grace, what's up ?' A synthesised female voice replied: 'You are meeting with international reporters today. Jessie is out and has left an important message for you. You have a meeting later with Charles. Should I continue?'

Saying Grace at the family table has a whole new meaning in Redmond. In every room Cluts could converse with the disembodied voice. But he denied that Grace is the central 'brain' of the entire house - evocative of Hal, the ship's computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey - and liable to lock you in the attic. 'It works as a central unified system, but it's just a mesh of different computers.'

Cluts added that although his young son will one day think nothing of conversing with a wall, today people crave something more visual. On the wall appeared a computer display showing the latest weather, family members' messages and locations, the house temperature and security control and entertainment options. There was no screen. Instead the graphics were projected from behind the paint on the wall.

The home of the future naturally has a wide flat-screen television. Cluts said: 'Ten years from now it's imaginable that all the content ever created will be available on your family TV. But the worst thing imaginable would be to throw it at you all at once.' So even your TV becomes 'intelligent': it suggests Field of Dreams because today is the anniversary of your trip to Iowa to see where it was filmed.

Nearby, Cluts placed a souvenir miniature of the Eiffel Tower in an alcove and, as if by magic, photographs from his trip to Paris filled the eight surrounding digital frames. Could it really recognise the Eiffel Tower? Not exactly. The souvenir had been fitted with a radio frequency identification, or RFID, tag which told the computer it matched the dates when Cluts took his photos in the French capital.

The tags, which each cost about a penny to produce, will be central to the home of the future. When a paper invitation containing an RFID tag is pinned on the family bulletin board, it communicates automatically with the worldwide web, and a virtual display drops down asking if you want to RSVP. The board is full of such displays, woven into its fabric. Cluts believes that five or six years from now the board may be available for less than £100.

All these remain 'concepts' which may or may not see the light of day. The home of the future offers some tantalising hints about the way we might live in the not so distant future. But those who want to move in now should think twice. Microsoft did not build a bathroom.