忘掉智能家居吧，它现在都在云端

Five years ago, when I started writing regularly for MNN, I thought that my focus was going to be on The Internet of Things and the Smart Home. In my first post, What is the smart home? It's too soon to tell, I wrote: "We are at the beginning of a new era ... Nobody knows how it's going to work or what it's going to do, but it's going to be quite a ride."

五年前，当我开始定期为MNN撰稿时，我认为我的重点将放在物联网和智能家居上。在我的第一篇文章中，什么是智能家居?现在下结论还为时过早，我写道:“我们正处于一个新时代的开端……没有人知道它将如何工作，也没有人知道它将做什么，但这将是一段相当长的旅程。”

In fact, the smart home has been a big dud. There are a few smart thermostats and light bulbs out there. My Apple Watch and iPhone are marginally more sophisticated. About the biggest advances we see are in the proliferation of devices like the Amazon Echo, where we can ask Alexa to deliver stuff to our homes; otherwise, most of the changes in the last five years have been in the cloud, in services that we pay for rather than things that we own.

事实上，智能家居一直是个大问题。那里有一些智能恒温器和灯泡。我的Apple Watch和iPhone要复杂一些。我们看到的最大进步是亚马逊Echo等设备的普及，我们可以让Alexa把东西送到家里;除此之外，过去5年的大部分变化都发生在云计算、我们付费的服务上，而不是我们拥有的东西上。

That big computer can do anything now. (Photo: Keystone/Getty Images)

On sister site TreeHugger, I noted that cloud kitchen companies were inventing new brands, so that you can order any kind of food, sort of a virtual food court from a crappy mall. The best demonstration of where this is going is Rachael Ray to go, set up by Uber and supplied by cloud kitchens. She tells Bloomberg "a virtual restaurant gives me a more specific relationship to people in my audience. It’s me, joining people for dinner."

在姊妹网站TreeHugger上，我注意到云厨房公司正在发明新的品牌，所以你可以订购任何种类的食物，从一个蹩脚的购物中心虚拟的美食广场。最好的例子是Rachael Ray to go，由Uber建立，由云厨房提供。她告诉彭博社:“虚拟餐厅让我与我的观众有了更具体的关系。是我，和大家一起吃饭。”

Uber delivers Rachael's sardine sandwiches to your door! (Photo: PHILIP PACHECO/AFP/Getty Images)

Baby boomers will be living in the cloud

婴儿潮一代将生活在云端

You can get old, waiting for the smart home to happen, and I've been doing exactly that, which is why I've been writing more and more about issues affecting aging baby boomers — how we live, how we get around, how we eat. And it's beginning to look like we may be among the biggest beneficiaries of these cloud-based services, as we ask Alexa to order up everything from medicine to food to services and have Uber or Amazon deliver them to our doors.

你可能会变老，等待智能家居的出现，而我一直在做的正是这一点，这就是为什么我一直在写越来越多关于影响正在变老的婴儿潮一代的问题——我们如何生活，我们如何出行，我们如何饮食。现在看来，我们可能是这些云服务的最大受益者之一，因为我们要求Alexa订购从药品到食品到服务的所有东西，并让优步或亚马逊送货上门。

It's already shaking up the "active adult" and "independent living" senior communities, where providing food service is a key attraction but a major money-loser, and residents often complain that the food is boring or monotonous. One California provider to primarily Indian residents now uses cloud kitchens instead of its own.

它已经动摇了“活跃的成年人”和“独立生活”的老年人社区，在那里，提供食品服务是一个主要的吸引力，但也是一个主要的经济损失，居民经常抱怨食物是无聊或单调的。一家主要为印度居民提供服务的加州供应商现在使用云厨房，而不是自己的厨房。

The kitchen of the future is down the street and around the corner. (Photo: Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

Takeout food has a reputation for being full of salt and fat, and one commenter to my TreeHugger post noted that users of cloud kitchens would end up "poor, fat, and buried in plastic waste." But cooking for one can be extremely expensive and wasteful, while food from cloud kitchens doesn't have to be. Swiss investment bank UBS suggested in a study that efficiencies in purchasing and production could actually make it cheaper and more efficient. "The total cost of production of a professionally cooked and delivered meal could approach the cost of home-cooked food, or beat it when time is factored in."

外卖食物以富含盐和脂肪而著称，我的“拥抱树”博客上的一位评论者指出，使用云厨房的人最终会“贫穷、肥胖，埋在塑料垃圾里”。但是为一个人做饭可能是非常昂贵和浪费的，而来自云厨房的食物不一定是。瑞士投资银行瑞银集团(UBS)在一项研究中表示，提高采购和生产效率实际上可能会降低成本，提高效率。“一顿专业烹制并配送的餐食的生产总成本可能接近家庭烹饪食品的成本，或者如果考虑到时间因素，会超过家庭烹饪食品的成本。”

I've devoted a lot of space to cloud kitchens because they're a good example of how things are changing. In that post five years ago I wrote about the smart revolution: "We have no idea where it's going to take us, what our cities and homes will be like, how it will change the way we live. It never works out the way we think it's going to."

我已经为云厨房投入了大量的空间，因为它们是事物如何变化的一个很好的例子。五年前，我在那篇关于智能革命的文章中写道:“我们不知道智能革命将把我们带向何方，我们的城市和家园将是什么样子，它将如何改变我们的生活方式。它永远不会像我们想象的那样成功。”

And it hasn't. We are indeed getting a revolution, but it's a revolution in services, not stuff. The senior housing operator using a cloud kitchen may soon find that people don't need as many of their other services either; anyone can order in. That's why I question the billions being invested now in retirement homes. With the huge baby boomer cohort getting older every day, there will likely be an explosion in cloud-based services, letting people stay out of senior homes much longer. We will be monitored by our watches and phones and hearing aids and there is nothing that we can't get through our iPhones or our Echos.

它没有。我们确实正在经历一场革命，但这是一场服务革命，而不是物质革命。使用云厨房的老年住房运营商可能很快就会发现，人们也不需要那么多其他服务;任何人都可以订购。这就是为什么我对现在投资在养老院的数十亿美元表示怀疑。随着婴儿潮一代人口的日益老龄化，基于云计算的服务可能会出现爆炸式增长，让人们远离养老院的时间更长。我们将被我们的手表、手机和助听器监控，没有什么是我们不能通过iphone或我们的回声得到的。

We still have no idea where the smart revolution is going to take us, but there will probably be a Google map for that. It's still going to be quite a ride, but probably on an Uber bike or Amazon truck.

我们仍然不知道智能革命将把我们带向何方，但可能会有一个谷歌地图。这将仍然是一个相当长的旅程，但可能是在优步自行车或亚马逊卡车上。