Advent of the Dumb Home
I keep waiting for the smart home. It’s pretty moot to me since my home looks pretty brill. Do we really want smart homes — homes that do everything for us automatically? I had a lot of PR material sent to me about smart AND dumb homes while compiling “2011” and have thus decided we’d be in trouble if the smart home invaded. And, in the words of Mad Magazine’s dearly departed founder —WHAT IF, you know…?
- Your “Smart Home” crashes and won’t let you in?
- Your toaster can’t find the software to toast your bread?
- You can’t multitask in your home- because if you use the washer, dryer, TVs, hair dryers, computers, printer, fax at the same time-because your house will slow down or freeze and have to be constantly rebooted?
- You haven’t upgraded your home to Windows Latest Crap and so the home can’t open up any of your windows? Wouldn’t that suck!
- Your home has to do time for “performing an illegal operation” and thanks to these occurring you constantly have no place to live?
- Your washing machine loses more than stray socks since you didn’t press the SAVE function?
- Your kid didn’t do as well on the college boards as your “Smart Home,” and your home got into a better college?
- Your “Smart Home” lost all of its smart data and became silly since you didn’t backup?
- You have to take courses every time your home has to be upgraded –formerly remodeled or repaired – if you didn’t upgrade, you can’t get replacement parts for your home or appliances?
- Your voice activated smart-pants home understands your “Honey, I’m home” command as “Honey, I’m a burglar,” and phones the cops cause it doesn’t believe you’re that honey. (”Lucy?”)
- It takes your microwave and all of your previously “instant on” electronics and appliances five minutes to recover from a crash?
- Your home flashes an error message, and your home and everything in it disappears because you didn’t save in a new file?
- Your home has obtained a virus and has to be quarantined from other homes?
- You can’t figure out Home’s many-thousand-page operating manual — neither can your kid, oy — and Amazon and all brick and mortar shops are out of “Smart Homes for Dummies?”
- Your one-stop-shopping bill that bundles your energy, cable, phone, and broadband services offers the worst of each service — everything goes out in a storm, service is provided by former cable company technicians, and you get interrupted during dinner constantly about switching to a new provider?
- The nanotechnology security system—which is smaller than a piece of dust — went up your child’s nose but no one knew because it couldn’t be seen and each time he sneezed, your alarm went off?
- Your refrigerator and the items in it and your dishwasher and detergent are communicating more than the — um — spouses?
- Robots can operate everything in your ID-enhanced house and decide human inhabitants aren’t needed because they just make a mess?
- Your “Smart Home” can’t keep pace with the Jones’ homes that are smarter?
- You’re kept on hold with bad music daily trying to reach Tech Service about your home network, which keeps going down? (That music is one of the ways in which the term “bad” reintroduces itself to you while waiting for someone to service you!)
The future is not about living like the Jetsons, and most of the cool stuff coming will be subtler and more seamless than the introduction of a pad that makes your own look schmaltzy. Hug your house.
