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What People Want From Smart Homes
Hallie Siegel writes: Despite the energy savings and environmental friendliness that has often been associated with smart home technologies, a recent poll showed that consumers primarily want their homes to optimize for their comfort level and personal preference (45%). Security/Safety and Energy Savings tied in second place (18%). Environmentally friendliness came in at only 11%. Note that the three most voted choices have direct advantages for the user, as opposed to Environmental Friendliness, which is primarily a societal benefit. What would you look for in a smart home?
I want my home to be stupid, to not have a telescreen, and to not track me or sell my habits to third parties. ;)
I want a home that cooks and cleans. Cooks and cleans. I can take care of the rest.
Ah, the old "smart fridge" fad.
For my use case, this would be impractical, as I tend not to have many "staple" foodstuffs and tend to shop for the meal(s) I intend to make in the near future, and I've usually got a good idea of what's in the fridge.
Back when "fridges with screens that will manage your grocery list for you" was being talked about a lot, some people described situations where it could be helpful, but they all seemed to involve adopting a very rigid protocol around fridge use ("remember to punch in the percentage of ketchup remaining when you are done with it Billy!", to which my response was "screw that shit".
Nobody asked for a "smart home". Or a self-driving car. Or phones that track us. Or cameras on every corner. Or internet activity records. Or the smart TVs and appliances with mics that will record our coversations (it's in the EULA for smart TVs - "be careful what you say around our TV") NO ONE asked for these things. They are being rammed into us.
From the article:
General Electric, in particular, entered smart lighting market with the introduction of GE Link, a smart LED bulb that consumers can remotely control from anywhere in the world and sync with other connected devices.
Wow, really? A bulb you can remotely control from anywhere in the world, huh? And I'll bet the service that let's us do all that will only cost us $9.99 a month, right? What a bargain. I mean, I've always wanted to turn my kitchen light on or off from the grocery store. That's going to be so handy!
Meh. At some point, this phase 2 of the home automation fad will probably boil down to a few practical gizmos that people find useful, and history will simply laugh at our "smart bulbs" for the ridiculous overkill it represents in attempted convenience.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.