JONATHAN CLUTS is the type of guy who once rewired his dorm room to control all the lights from a central switchbox. And as a kid, he thought it would be great to be an "Imagineer," one of the creative minds behind the Disney theme parks.
He hasn't realized that particular ambition, but he has come pretty close as the director of Microsoft's strategic prototyping team, including oversight of the futuristic Microsoft Home on the company's Redmond campus.
And in an extension of that role, Cluts, 47, is one of the key people behind the new Innoventions Dream Home attraction at Disneyland. The project, scheduled to open Monday, is a partnership of Microsoft and other companies.
The Dream Home is a modern-day sequel to the Monsanto House of the Future, a Disneyland attraction from 1957 to 1967. The new Dream Home project, in Disneyland's Tomorrowland, includes some futuristic technology concepts, like its predecessor.
But the companies made a conscious decision to focus more on technological capabilities that are possible today, though not widely used.
"It's real. This isn't science fiction, and it's not pure extrapolation," Cluts said last week. "You can integrate much of what you see here now."
The problem with going purely futuristic is that people get home and say, "Wow that's cool, but it's never going to happen," Cluts explained.
By focusing on current scenarios, the Dream Home also doubles as a subtle promotional vehicle for Microsoft. For example, the dining room table is a collection of Microsoft Surface tabletop computers that display photos and videos when members of the home's fictional family place their mobile phones on the top.
Microsoft Surface computers are currently being deployed in commercial settings, so that scenario is already possible, but versions for consumers aren't expected to be available for a few years.
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