Is there a future for the smart house? When, already? And what will it entail? Beyond plumbing and electri-city, surely our homes will develop an "inner" net-networked intelligence to manage things more sensibly. Our buildings need to become wiser. Remember, Jane Jetson will be born someday soon, so we've got to come up with something more interesting than an Internet toaster.

A look to the past might help. I write this in Kyoto at its cherry blossom peak. Kyoto is a special city, with many ancient wooden buildings intact and in harmony with the newer city. And there is more than charm to the old homes and country inns; centuries of zenlike wisdom are infused into the architecture. Wandering through a garden, I noticed peculiar cedar trees that grew into perfectly straight poles 10 meters high with leafy pompoms on the top, like something Dr. Seuss would have drawn. This was not natural. Thousands of years ago, monks figured out that if a tree's horizontal limbs were constantly trimmed, it would grow perfectly straight. Over hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, they cultivated forests in this way to supply perfect pillars and timbers for buildings.