Right now big houses are expensive because they require much material and labour to build and land is expensive in cities. In EP robotics and nanotech makes building much cheaper, and land/space is nearly free. But there is a huge constraint: the outside environment is really hostile. There is no place in the solar system where a biomorph can survive well outside their house, and unless that house is built with exacting safety precautions it can become a deathtrap. In space there has to be radiation shielding, protection from micrometeorites, airtight seals and temperature control beside the obvious life support. Titan's atmosphere is extremely cold and poisonous, and if it mixes with terrestrial air there is a good chance of getting a fire or explosion. And so on. This makes constructing housing tricky. Underground housing like on Luna, some parts of Mars, in asteroids and on Titan gets a lot of safety for free, but now space becomes costly since digging out these spaces takes a lot of effort. Hence this kind of environment will tend to be cramped, favoring minimalism and "coffin hotel" style rooms. Floating habitats like on Venus have similar weight constraints, and most likely tends towards a cramped inner core and some enormous inflatable environments on the outside. In space, inflatable habitats can produce very large volumes cheaply, especially in the outer system where radiation is less of a problem. Scum barges may have been cramped in the extreme at first, but once people started adding space to them they became roomier. I doubt they have much architectural cohesion, though. The real place for big houses is on Mars, in the most terraformed regions. Land is cheap, building is cheap, and the environment is decent. Some people are going to buy nanofactured McMansions, or rather McPalaces. This may also happen in some space habitats, although there space is often more constrained.

Quincey Forder wrote:

what about the inside equipment and furnitures? What kind of stuff can be found in any lambda familly home in Elysium, for exemple?

Looking around my current flat I find things in the following categories: decorations/aesthetics, pets/houseplants, computers, books/papers, tools and peripheral equipment, furniture, consumables, clothing, storage. Decorations and aeshtetics won't dissapear; while few can afford real Earth memorabilia it is still fairly easy to print out or buy handmade art (paintings, sculpture, textiles, glass, beetles etc). The same is true for pets and plants, something I think many people will have to get some company in the big, dark universe. Computers and other home electronics, as well as the books and papers, they all implode into the mesh and ectos/endos. Any remaining instances are collectors items or used for something suspicious - why would you have a standalone computer instead of rely on the nanoprocessors in the walls? Peripheral equipment also largely dissapears. Tools range from eating utensils to engineering equipment. A lot of simple tools are recyclable nanoprinted objects - if you have a home matter compiler you do not need to keep them. Print the plates, cutlery and glasses, eat, then recycle what is left instead of washing dishes. In a sense the matter compiler/fabber/cornucopia is the only tool you need, although in practice I imagine there is a need/desire for a separate food compiler, maybe a fridge for bought food and cold things, etc. Many objects are blobjects/spimes that can change and adapt when needed, so they act as general tools. So I would expect the EP home to have much fewer overt tools and gadgets but various ergonomic and elegant objects that could become those things when needed. The exception is all those little things that are a hassle to print all the time like toothbrushes or towels (assuming a person is not using a specialized nanofog). Furniture is likely unchanged: if there is gravity, you want a bed (or hammock or pod or tatami), chairs and tables. Very few are hierloom furniture, but they can be made to look like it. Most are of course nanofactured and recyclable: real carpentry is expensive and gives status. In low gravity environments the design and function of course become quite different. Clothes are generally smart, self-cleaning or self-repairing, so many can make do with a much smaller wardrobe. In the bathroom there are various medications/devices/cosmetics that provide them to keep the morph healthy or shiny. Since so many objects are recyclable spimes there is little need to store many of them. Something new would be the robots. Most likely there will be a robot warren somewhere, a wardrobe where the local bots are stored and repaired. So, my conclusion is that an EP home would look somewhat minimal and sparse, perhaps a bit like an ideal japanese home. Until the kids printed out their full toy file, of course. The dominant objects would still be furniture, but there would be more decorations/plants than storage or information - many sculptures but few wardrobes, bookshelves or computers. Recognizable furniture, but the "wood" is actually very smart and contains the entertainment console. A kitchen or bathroom that is just as much a nano-workshop. Thanks to smart materials and manufacturing the space is quite reconfigurable: if you want a shelf to hold your mementos or your current toolset you can make it and just have it attach to any wall. Over time EP homes will accumulate an amazing amount of stuff despite recycling (it is a chore, you need to walk to the kitchen and will have to wait for *five* minutes before you can print something!!), in the form of art, souvenirs, stuff that might be useful to have, blobjects, bots (cannot have too many), toys and whatnot. But right now most families have just had 10 years of filling up. It will be really messy in a century.

I think the interfaces will be very different from person to person. But as a rule of thumb good interfaces are invisible - things just happens as I want them, without me having to make a conscious effort to get them like that. This is of course why muses are so useful. The muse is in a sense the interface to everyday life, an intelligent interface that knows you and your habits. The AI in an apartment works together with the muse to fix things, quite possibly by measuring subconscious responses like eye saccades ("The owner noticed the scratch on the wall, send the repairgnats there!"). You are getting hungry, and if it is a good AI it will already have prepared a meal. Many objects require an overt interface simply because you don't want them to start due to a subconscious whim. Most use endos and ectos to run - when you activate them (maybe by touching them or sending a mesh command) their interfaces blossom. Some are just augmented reality menus like in the vide, some have an internal AI and others may have more creative "skins". An art blobject might have a little simspace allowing you to wander its internal art gallery while selecting the shape it should assume. An environment control tool might have a baroque interface with gilded wood, angels of air purity and nanosecurity singing and a jewelled set of core options. In fact, objects that do not respond to mesh queries are either profoundly broken, valuable antiques or something secret and dangerous.

Yes, books and bookshelves are nice decorations. But nobody is going to take them seriously as information repositories or real artefacts - they are just a stylish decoration, a bit how many country houses try to look like rustic farms or an european law firm's offices attempt to give the appearance of being a classicist palazzo. It looks good, but nobody is really fooled. This of course makes the printed books a perfect place to hide things. Who actually looks for the secret files *in the books*?!

Decivre wrote:

Plus I can see new cultural taboos coming to play during Eclipse Phase's time. If you go to any Christian's home, I guarantee you will still find a copy of the Bible. However, the distribution of digital copies of the book, combined with shifting cultural norms might render it a "look but don't touch" object... where people [i]never[/i] open their physical books, as a standard akin to how placing the Qur'an on the highest shelf is a tradition today, or stacking other books on top of the Bible was considered offensive a couple generations back.

Exactly! Reading non-hypertexted, non-interactive works also hard for most people. Or even reading, for that matter - your muse can read for you, or you get the XP version. Or, for those on the cutting neuroedge, get gnosis inlays to have the information of the book downloaded in your skillwiring. The skill [Bible] is probably one of the best-selling skillsofts around.

Arenamontanus wrote:

Yes, books and bookshelves are nice decorations. But nobody is going to take them seriously as information repositories or real artefacts - they are just a stylish decoration, a bit how many country houses try to look like rustic farms or an european law firm's offices attempt to give the appearance of being a classicist palazzo. It looks good, but nobody is really fooled.

However, one could probably shape an external solid state data storage module to look like an antique set of encyclopedias out of a sense of style. An eccentric might also consider storing older backups of their mind in storage modules shaped like diaries.

Arenamontanus wrote:

This of course makes the printed books a perfect place to hide things. Who actually looks for the secret files *in the books*?!

:D

The Doctor wrote:

However, one could probably shape an external solid state data storage module to look like an antique set of encyclopedias out of a sense of style. An eccentric might also consider storing older backups of their mind in storage modules shaped like diaries.

True. A lot of objects in a person's home might be designed with classic (modern for us) aesthetics in mind. Makers shaped like ovens, endos shaped like classic jewelry, disassemblers shaped like toilets and trash cans could all be common furniture in homes... especially in places where people cling to Earth culture, like Luna. I also imagine that lingual anachronisms will be retro-popular ("That jive is l33+, meng!").

weavermount wrote:

I'm actually not so sure about this. Firsts off 89% of the population in 10 AF is made of people with the means survive the fall. I bet the overwhelming major these people can read. Secondly smart normal children regularly teach themselves to read, and almost all children pick it up with minimal encouragement. I think a muse saying 'Hey billy, can you figure out what that says?' would be enough teach most people to read. Remember this is the capacity of a flat. Also the writing process sharpens thinking. They make note of educational improvements. I doubt that includes avoiding literacy.

Muse assistants and the mesh largely came about 20-40 years prior to the Fall. That means that a generation, perhaps two, have grown up with AI assistants and implanted computer hardware. That leaves a large amount of transhumanity who grew up without the necessity to learn how to read or write, due to the fact that they had Muses and mesh inserts that could do the job for them. I'm not saying that illiteracy is the standard... but I know that motivation is a huge factor in the learning process, and you have to admit that automating a task certainly detracts from motivation. It is very possible that a large amount of modern transhumanity, despite having the capacity to become literate, has [i]no need[/i] to be literate.

Quincey Forder wrote:

litteracy might still be mendatory in some professions blue collar jobs might not require it, but I'm certain that no hypercorp will hire employee who can't read service notes, updates in standards & practice, etc without the help of his or her muse

That's the problem: how will you know? How can you possibly tell the difference between someone who is actually reading a digital document, and someone who is having it read to them by their Muse within their mind? I mean I agree that there will be jobs where literacy will be needed: xenolinguists who study the heiroglyphics of an alien civilization obviously need the ability to read, as does a cryptologist... but there may be a multitude of white collar jobs where literacy is largely unnecessary, and may largely go undetected to begin with.

Quincey Forder wrote:

re-reading the book, i noticed something. Almost every household have Servitors robot, right? what's their level of intelligence and awereness? what can they do exactly? are they in touch or an extention of their owner's muse? had a funny idea for a Servitor with nihilistic bug that keeps on beating itself the son of the owner, a kid with a taste for early 21st century british litterature call it Dobby

Our group has been handling it thusly: any robot or vehicle or anything else comes with a basic AI stock. This AI has a 10 in all aptitudes, and limited capacity to do certain tasks, generally related to whatever bot or vehicle they are in. In essence, they can do the bare minimum capability of the machine they are designed for. You have to buy a more advanced AI to give your bot or vehicle more capacity (though I'd imagine that most people purchase their bots and the AI designed for them at the exact same time). Bot, vehicle and device AIs can be found on page 331, along with both stats and cost.

[quote=Quincey Forder]is there any bipedal robots that aren't used as morphs? not necessarly anthropomorphic, but with legs and arms (could be more than 2) ? I'm thinking about military class robots or security there is a good exemple in Carmen McCallum, a french graphic novel: the Iguane robot. a rather bulky, seven feet tall robot with a narrow AI Servitors can be. The big issue is that servitors are built decidedly nonhuman in structure. They may be bipedal, but their design will not be too similar to humans or synthmorphs. This is intentional, as the designers do not want people mistaking them for other humans, or feeling guilty for ordering them around (that's what they were designed for).