Mike Chorney is president of a residential integration firm in British Columbia, a business named La Scala that’s been around for decades. Chorney — like a lot of his counterparts — is more about awe than accessories: He’s more interested in providing a user experience informed by technology than the technology itself. His quest for that immersive, seamless interaction between human and home, between body and building, sees him bemoaning one aspect of the connected house:
“I was in a board meeting with some developers and I asked a simple question: ‘How many people actually used a key to open the door of their car this morning?’ I got one hand in the room. Then I posed the next question: ‘Why are we building these condominiums in downtown Vancouver at a thousand dollars a square foot and then handing them a key to open up their door?’ Technology that we’re accustomed to day-to-day, in our car and through our mobile devices — why aren’t we actually using that in our own homes?”