Smart buildings: What happens to our free will?

SMART buildings are a new generation of buildings in which technological devices, such as sensors and other non-conscious cognitive systems, are embedded in the structure of the buildings themselves. Smart buildings promise to personalise the experiences of their occupants by using real-time feedback mechanisms and forward-looking management of interactions between humans and the built environment fuelled with artificial intelligence. In a not-so-distant future, this process might involve augmented reality (AR) devices, such as AR glasses currently under development by major technology companies (eg Apple, Google, Meta). 

Experiential customisation in the built environment supposes continuous monitoring of the activities of occupants and the use of sophisticated profiling models. While these issues spark concerns about privacy and data transparency, the questions raised by the massive arrival of digital technologies in our living spaces go far beyond this.

Thanks to ubiquitous computing, interactions between building occupants and embedded technology are quiet and invisible. As a result, the occupants’ attention is never drawn to the massive presence of computers operating permanently in the background.