忘掉智能家居吧，它現(xiàn)在都在云端

忘掉智能家居吧，它現(xiàn)在都在云端

Five years ago, when I started writing regularly for MNN, I thought that my focus was going to be on The Internet of Things and the Smart Home. In my first post, What is the smart home? It's too soon to tell, I wrote: "We are at the beginning of a new era ... Nobody knows how it's going to work or what it's going to do, but it's going to be quite a ride."

五年前，當(dāng)我開(kāi)始定期為MNN撰稿時(shí)，我認(rèn)為我的重點(diǎn)將放在物聯(lián)網(wǎng)和智能家居上。在我的第一篇文章中，什么是智能家居?現(xiàn)在下結(jié)論還為時(shí)過(guò)早，我寫(xiě)道:“我們正處于一個(gè)新時(shí)代的開(kāi)端……沒(méi)有人知道它將如何工作，也沒(méi)有人知道它將做什么，但這將是一段相當(dāng)長(zhǎng)的旅程。”

In fact, the smart home has been a big dud. There are a few smart thermostats and light bulbs out there. My Apple Watch and iPhone are marginally more sophisticated. About the biggest advances we see are in the proliferation of devices like the Amazon Echo, where we can ask Alexa to deliver stuff to our homes; otherwise, most of the changes in the last five years have been in the cloud, in services that we pay for rather than things that we own.

事實(shí)上，智能家居一直是個(gè)大問(wèn)題。那里有一些智能恒溫器和燈泡。我的Apple Watch和iPhone要復(fù)雜一些。我們看到的最大進(jìn)步是亞馬遜Echo等設(shè)備的普及，我們可以讓Alexa把東西送到家里;除此之外，過(guò)去5年的大部分變化都發(fā)生在云計(jì)算、我們付費(fèi)的服務(wù)上，而不是我們擁有的東西上。

That big computer can do anything now. (Photo: Keystone/Getty Images)

On sister site TreeHugger, I noted that cloud kitchen companies were inventing new brands, so that you can order any kind of food, sort of a virtual food court from a crappy mall. The best demonstration of where this is going is Rachael Ray to go, set up by Uber and supplied by cloud kitchens. She tells Bloomberg "a virtual restaurant gives me a more specific relationship to people in my audience. It’s me, joining people for dinner."

在姊妹網(wǎng)站TreeHugger上，我注意到云廚房公司正在發(fā)明新的品牌，所以你可以訂購(gòu)任何種類(lèi)的食物，從一個(gè)蹩腳的購(gòu)物中心虛擬的美食廣場(chǎng)。最好的例子是Rachael Ray to go，由Uber建立，由云廚房提供。她告訴彭博社:“虛擬餐廳讓我與我的觀(guān)眾有了更具體的關(guān)系。是我，和大家一起吃飯。”

Uber delivers Rachael's sardine sandwiches to your door! (Photo: PHILIP PACHECO/AFP/Getty Images)

Baby boomers will be living in the cloud

嬰兒潮一代將生活在云端

You can get old, waiting for the smart home to happen, and I've been doing exactly that, which is why I've been writing more and more about issues affecting aging baby boomers — how we live, how we get around, how we eat. And it's beginning to look like we may be among the biggest beneficiaries of these cloud-based services, as we ask Alexa to order up everything from medicine to food to services and have Uber or Amazon deliver them to our doors.

你可能會(huì)變老，等待智能家居的出現(xiàn)，而我一直在做的正是這一點(diǎn)，這就是為什么我一直在寫(xiě)越來(lái)越多關(guān)于影響正在變老的嬰兒潮一代的問(wèn)題——我們?nèi)绾紊?，我們?nèi)绾纬鲂?，我們?nèi)绾物嬍场，F(xiàn)在看來(lái)，我們可能是這些云服務(wù)的最大受益者之一，因?yàn)槲覀円驛lexa訂購(gòu)從藥品到食品到服務(wù)的所有東西，并讓優(yōu)步或亞馬遜送貨上門(mén)。

It's already shaking up the "active adult" and "independent living" senior communities, where providing food service is a key attraction but a major money-loser, and residents often complain that the food is boring or monotonous. One California provider to primarily Indian residents now uses cloud kitchens instead of its own.

它已經(jīng)動(dòng)搖了“活躍的成年人”和“獨(dú)立生活”的老年人社區(qū)，在那里，提供食品服務(wù)是一個(gè)主要的吸引力，但也是一個(gè)主要的經(jīng)濟(jì)損失，居民經(jīng)常抱怨食物是無(wú)聊或單調(diào)的。一家主要為印度居民提供服務(wù)的加州供應(yīng)商現(xiàn)在使用云廚房，而不是自己的廚房。

The kitchen of the future is down the street and around the corner. (Photo: Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

Takeout food has a reputation for being full of salt and fat, and one commenter to my TreeHugger post noted that users of cloud kitchens would end up "poor, fat, and buried in plastic waste." But cooking for one can be extremely expensive and wasteful, while food from cloud kitchens doesn't have to be. Swiss investment bank UBS suggested in a study that efficiencies in purchasing and production could actually make it cheaper and more efficient. "The total cost of production of a professionally cooked and delivered meal could approach the cost of home-cooked food, or beat it when time is factored in."

外賣(mài)食物以富含鹽和脂肪而著稱(chēng)，我的“擁抱樹(shù)”博客上的一位評(píng)論者指出，使用云廚房的人最終會(huì)“貧窮、肥胖，埋在塑料垃圾里”。但是為一個(gè)人做飯可能是非常昂貴和浪費(fèi)的，而來(lái)自云廚房的食物不一定是。瑞士投資銀行瑞銀集團(tuán)(UBS)在一項(xiàng)研究中表示，提高采購(gòu)和生產(chǎn)效率實(shí)際上可能會(huì)降低成本，提高效率。“一頓專(zhuān)業(yè)烹制并配送的餐食的生產(chǎn)總成本可能接近家庭烹飪食品的成本，或者如果考慮到時(shí)間因素，會(huì)超過(guò)家庭烹飪食品的成本。”

I've devoted a lot of space to cloud kitchens because they're a good example of how things are changing. In that post five years ago I wrote about the smart revolution: "We have no idea where it's going to take us, what our cities and homes will be like, how it will change the way we live. It never works out the way we think it's going to."

我已經(jīng)為云廚房投入了大量的空間，因?yàn)樗鼈兪鞘挛锶绾巫兓囊粋€(gè)很好的例子。五年前，我在那篇關(guān)于智能革命的文章中寫(xiě)道:“我們不知道智能革命將把我們帶向何方，我們的城市和家園將是什么樣子，它將如何改變我們的生活方式。它永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)像我們想象的那樣成功。”

And it hasn't. We are indeed getting a revolution, but it's a revolution in services, not stuff. The senior housing operator using a cloud kitchen may soon find that people don't need as many of their other services either; anyone can order in. That's why I question the billions being invested now in retirement homes. With the huge baby boomer cohort getting older every day, there will likely be an explosion in cloud-based services, letting people stay out of senior homes much longer. We will be monitored by our watches and phones and hearing aids and there is nothing that we can't get through our iPhones or our Echos.

它沒(méi)有。我們確實(shí)正在經(jīng)歷一場(chǎng)革命，但這是一場(chǎng)服務(wù)革命，而不是物質(zhì)革命。使用云廚房的老年住房運(yùn)營(yíng)商可能很快就會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)，人們也不需要那么多其他服務(wù);任何人都可以訂購(gòu)。這就是為什么我對(duì)現(xiàn)在投資在養(yǎng)老院的數(shù)十億美元表示懷疑。隨著嬰兒潮一代人口的日益老齡化，基于云計(jì)算的服務(wù)可能會(huì)出現(xiàn)爆炸式增長(zhǎng)，讓人們遠(yuǎn)離養(yǎng)老院的時(shí)間更長(zhǎng)。我們將被我們的手表、手機(jī)和助聽(tīng)器監(jiān)控，沒(méi)有什么是我們不能通過(guò)iphone或我們的回聲得到的。

We still have no idea where the smart revolution is going to take us, but there will probably be a Google map for that. It's still going to be quite a ride, but probably on an Uber bike or Amazon truck.

我們?nèi)匀徊恢乐悄芨锩鼘盐覀儙蚝畏剑赡軙?huì)有一個(gè)谷歌地圖。這將仍然是一個(gè)相當(dāng)長(zhǎng)的旅程，但可能是在優(yōu)步自行車(chē)或亞馬遜卡車(chē)上。