Inside The New American Home

Instead, says Keiper, convergence is happening elsewhere, in the form of ubiquitous computing. Every appliance is loaded with chips, and each machine can be linked to a central controller. There is a revolution going on behind the walls and in the basement. A whole new style of bundled multipurpose wiring, called structured wiring, is worming its way through the walls, with the capacity to handle cable, audio, satellite, phone and computer traffic. In the basement, computer servers (think of them as home mainframes) are sharing space with furnaces, providing network hookups to every room. Says Gottsegen: "We've seen a huge trend in wiring up houses and apartments that's driven by the need not just for home offices but also for networked audio, video and voice data throughout the house."

All this stuff, plus the lighting, heating and cooling, security, sound system, curtains and window blinds, can be run through a computer controller. George Collins of Peterson & Collins, a high-end builder in Washington, has a client who has taken it to the limit. A computer runs everything from the snowmelt system in the driveway to the temperature of the fish tank to the alerting of the homeowner that someone is in the swimming pool.

Lighting too has "entered a whole new dimension," says Collins. Low-voltage dimming systems now allow users to program the lights in a room to suit a given function, mood or time of day. Even floor lamps are programmable. It's environmental control in two ways: the home's infrastructure is more efficient, and the setting can be made more aesthetically pleasing.

Will our current obsession with shared open spaces and lush private ones look silly years from now? Will future owners rip out these projects, shaking their heads at our excess ("A second oven! What were these people thinking?")? Bet on it. Economic and demographic changes inevitably shape the way we live and the homes we live in. The rapidly increasing number of people age 60 and older, for instance, is already dictating changes in bathroom design and raising other livability issues.

Today we're busily grinding away in an economy that's going nowhere, and our homes are a reflection of that. Sociologist Beck says Americans are so severely deprived of time, particularly leisure and vacation time, that they are trying to make up for it in their living quarters--and are doing a bang-up job. The master suites, the bathroom spas, the game rooms, the professional kitchens and the lobby-like great rooms are our way of turning our once humble abodes into luxury hotels. Feel free to put some chocolate on your pillow. --With reporting by Harriet Barovick, Lisa McLaughlin and Desa Philadelphia/New York, Jyl Benson/New Orleans, Leslie Everton Brice/Atlanta, Betsy Rubiner/Des Moines and Sonja Steptoe/Los Angeles