The smart coffee table of the future will be central. It's probably just waiting for the prices of electronic components to come down far enough so the tables can sell for less than $3,000 or so. Microsoft has made no secret of its intention to make PixelSense tables available for consumers. Currently, the SUR40 isn’t sold to consumers it's sold mostly to bars, casinos and retail stores. Here's a nice video that shows off some of the amazing capabilities of PixelSense. The best example of this technology is a product from Samsung called the SUR40 with Microsoft PixelSense. It will also control other smart appliances in the house, such as the TV. The coffee table as a computer will help you entertain guests and stimulate conversation. They tend to be oversized and of heavy construction, since there is no pressing need for portability." In the relentless drive to turn physical things into virtual ones, the purpose served by the coffee table book will soon be served by the coffee table itself, and for the same reasons. Wikipedia has a nice entry on the coffee table: "A coffee table book is a hardcover book that is intended to sit on a coffee table or similar surface in an area where guests sit and are entertained, thus inspiring conversation or alleviating boredom. It's the only category of printed content that's expressly designed to sit on a specific piece of furniture. Have you ever wondered why coffee table books exist? It's a pretty strange literary genre, if you think about it. The ultimate coffee table book is itself a coffee table. But the intelligent coffee table of the future may be the central computing device in your home. The reason is that the current location and purpose of a coffee table as a table are peripheral to what's important about your family's life. When the dust settles on the transition to intelligent furniture, however, it's likely that the lowly coffee table will usurp the crown and become the most important (and expensive) table in your house. Its quality, appearance and placement are far more important than that of lesser tables. You spend more money on it than other tables, such as bedroom nightstands, the coffee table, the patio table, the workbench in the garage, the desk in your home office and so on. Today the king of tables, of course, is the dining room table. For example, the tables throughout your house exist in a functional ranking system. The transition to intelligent furniture will also involve a reconsideration of the hierarchy of furniture. In computer science, the concept of computers built into everything is called ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing, ambient intelligence or, my favorite label: everyware. And the kitchen counter will work a lot like an iPad. The dining room table will be usable like a laptop. But the destiny of computing devices is to be built into our furniture.
SMALL COFFEE TABLES PC
With the increasing availability of television sets from the 1950s onwards coffee tables really came into their own since they are low enough, even with cups and glasses on them, not to obstruct the view of the TV.Computers started out as discrete objects to be placed on top of furniture - a PC on the desk, a laptop on the dining room table. There is no historical precedent.," suggesting that coffee tables were a late development in the history of furniture. Joseph Aronson writing in 1938 defines a coffee table as a, "Low wide table now used before a sofa or couch.
However, as the Anglo-Japanese style was popular in Britain throughout the 1870s and 1880s and low tables were common in Japan, this seems to be an equally likely source for the concept of a long low table.įrom the late 19th century onwards, many coffee tables were subsequently made in earlier styles due to the popularity of revivalism, so it is quite possible to find Louis XVI style coffee tables or Georgian style coffee tables, but there seems to be no evidence of a table actually made as a coffee table before this time. Later coffee tables were designed as low tables and this idea may have come from the Ottoman Empire, based on the tables in use in tea gardens. Far from being a low table, this table was about twenty-seven inches high. Other sources, however, list it only as "table" so this can not be stated categorically. If this is correct it may be one of the earliest made in Europe. Godwin in 1868 and made in large numbers by William Watt, and Collinson and Lock, is a coffee table. Whineray and also in The Country Life Book of English Furniture by Edward T. According to the listing in Victorian Furniture by R.
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