A data centre with no centre: Why the cloud of the future will live in our homes

When we talk about the home of the future, we might think of technologies that will bring convenience to our lives. Refrigerators that know when we’ve run out of milk and order more for us, perhaps, or 3D printers that will make any shape of pasta you can imagine. But while this Jetsons-like vision might initially hold some appeal to the average person on the street, such innovations are likely to come and go in a flash. In truth, we struggle to adapt to technologies that are designed to help us around the home, often reverting to old ways of doing things. Take Amazon’s Alexa for example. The vast majority of voice skills that the AI assistant is capable of are largely unused by consumers. It’s time we shifted focus from gimmicks to changes that will offer genuine value to the household and the wider community. Because in the home of the future, the most interesting things will be happening behind the scenes. Imagine a home that is also a data centre. While on the surface this might seem like a far-fetched idea, it would actually bring many benefits. A vast amount of computational power currently goes unused in homes, with computers, games consoles set-top boxes and smart televisions under-utilised and in many cases in standby mode for most of their life. This untapped power could be used to drastically reduce reliance on existing data centres.