Edward Bellamy once imagined that music on demand would be "the limit of human felicity." A modern apartment is full of things that once drew the same kind of awe.

scroll to move through the apartment

The sitting room

It’s eight o’clock. The apartment is quiet, aside from the music playing softly over the speaker. It’s a playlist your friend made for you years ago. You send them a text to check in, then pick up a book, flick on the lamp, and settle into the chair to read.

Any song, at home

If we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained.

Edward Bellamy, 1888 — From Looking Backward, his utopian novel set in the year 2000.…