Home automation and jetpacks are surprisingly similar in that both of these space-age technologies have, for decades, been over promised and under delivered. Who here wouldn't love to tap a single button when exiting the house to activate the alarm, shut off the lights in the kids' rooms, lower the thermostat, and lock all the doors? That's the convenience, the promise left unfilled as we say goodbye to 2010. We live on a planet that still requires humans to manually close the blinds at the end of the day and flip on a light switch some 90 years since the commercial introduction of the incandescent light bulb. How primitive. And it's downright criminal in ecological and financial terms that we still can't easily
