Converged and networked technologies in the household have been talked about for ages, and were always "just around the corner", which turned out to be a lot farther than most industry insiders predicted. Now, however, there are some indications that all these technologies of tomorrow might really be available in the near future. The article linked here discusses four reasons why this is happening, but I think quite a bit of it is due to the rise of open, standard wireless technologies that make it much easier to connect things. That one advancement, alone, helps to explain the other three reasons: computing showing up in more products, computing companies moving into consumer electronics, and companies paying attention to what customers want - rather than telling them what they should want.