I Don’t Want a Smart Home
I received a Google Home at a conference. It currently lives — unplugged — in a closet. I am aware that it can only do its job, providing me with billions of facts in seconds, if I attach it to an outlet. That is not going to happen.
I have no problem with my current level of convenience. I have a machine that will wash my dishes if I place them inside. A machine that washes and dries my clothes. I even have a tiny machine that can boil a cup of water in a minute or so, helping me make tea. All of these machines require a human present for at least one step. I see zero reason to gain something new to manage just to have the ability to set something to run from afar.
Part of it is privacy concerns. Part of it is just not wanting one more thing to think about. Articles like that highlight the fact that home-based machines are still a far-cry from Jetson levels of convenience. Though it’s interesting that George Jetson never wondered aloud to Jane about the vast quantities of data their futuristic home was sending along to massive corporations…
I don’t want a smart home. Though I feel like I keep getting nudged in that direction whenever we need to replace an object. Why won’t the companies allow me to live a simple life? And why won’t the damn kids stop playing on my lawn?
Do you have smart products in your home?
16 comments
My husband wants the thermostat he can operate from his phone…until he realizes he’d have to keep the wifi running all the time. (We usually shut it off at night.). Apparently, our garage door opener can be connected to WiFi, but I can’t even be bothered to program the in-car remote (instead of the remotes that came with the opener), so n don’t see us using that. And I don’t need an additional house spy (beyond my phone), so we don’t have any Amazon or Google home products. I’ll pass on that. The Jetsons was nice but BuyNLarge from Wall-E seems more real to me.
We have one ec.ho d.ot. It was a gift, and I didn’t put it up for nearly a year because of privacy concerns. Husband wanted it up, though, so we compromised that it was okay to put one in one room only. It is handy for playing music, but that’s about it. As of now, I don’t want any other smart devices/speakers/toys/etc, mostly because I’m a little concerned about how much data is going back to corporations and who knows where else. But you’re right, the nudge is definitely in that direction – and I’m not really ready for it either.
We do have a lot of smart products. We have 3 echos spaced through the home, several outlets, a lightbulb, and two cameras. I do find it really convenient to be able to just say “add bananas to the shopping list” and know that if my husband stops at the grocery store on his way home he will see that we need bananas. Instead of going around at night making sure all the lights are off, we just say “time for bed” and everything goes off – which means we can wait until we’re fully upstairs to do it instead of stepping on legos in the dark.
We use it for music, as an intercom, white noise, and reminders. (Having someone remind me 3 minutes before I walk out the door to bring the thing I would have surely forgotten? Priceless.)
I know people have privacy concerns, but I mostly feel like .. we’re extremely boring basic people, and my privacy is already shot every time I do a search on my computer or phone so I may as well enjoy my convenience.
No smart devices in our house, and we don’t want them. I have a number of reservations about them, including the privacy concerns.
One massive downside of living in the Bay Area is having such devices pushed on you on a regular basis, often without choice. We currently have a Nest smoke/carbon monoxide detector in our apartment, which I’m not a fan of (outside of having to reprogram it as it was originally sent for Spanish, making the false alarming an interesting experience when one is trying to figure out why). I understand the desire to make things more fluid, particularly when our world is very go-go-go, but I’m very aware that these same companies are selling all that information with the end goal of making a small minority richer and more powerful. Frankly, I really am not comfortable with that.
Question for you: what does one do when they have a Smart device they have zero intention of using? Can it be repurposed? (I’m looking for creative uses)
I’m with you. We do have Alexa, but I’m always rushing to unplug her when I’m on the phone giving sensitive details to someone (like a health provider, for example). I use her mostly to ask the weather and to play music. I like that (my family members even more so) but I could easily do without those benefits to keep our privacy.
Though now that I think about it, my phone has a microphone and is probably picking up what I say and storing it somewhere, just like Alexa-plugged-in would.
I am 100% with you. When we bought our house 10 years ago we had to buy a new heater with thermostat. The thermostat pooped out a couple years ago. It seems the only ones we could buy that would work – – it’s carrier brand – – were “smart”. We ended up finding our old thermostat used on eBay and bought that one. I can walk up and program it anytime I want. I have no need to use my phone or check it from my work computer. I’ll be fighting any type of smart home as long as I can.
I do not have “smart” items in my home. I don’t even use voice commands on my phone. I’m not comfortable with any non-humans in my space anticipating my desires and talking to me about them. It’s just too creepy.
We have a “smart” TV & smartphones, but other than those things, no. My phone keeps asking me to try the voice command feature & I’m always like “NO.” I am sure it’s listening in on me anyway. :p I find Alexa, etc., kind of creepy.
Oh Mel! A person after my own heart. We do not have anything smart in our house. In fact, my husband who loves his video games refused to get a particuliar version of Xbox because of it’s eavesdropping (no idea which one I’m not a video game person) Neither of us like the privacy concerns and so we have nothing like that and disable everything we can on our phones and PC’s.
I will never get one of those. I have no desire to voice command my dishwasher or some other nonsense. My new kindle fire currently has an Alexa feature, which I mostly have asked it to play music or failed at attempts to look things up or try to play not. I do not want my household appliances connected to Wi-Fi, I have never “checked in” at a location on social media, and I turn off the gps on my phone unless I am using it to navigate. I’m a ludite cusp millennial like that.
We are a completely smart home. My husband and I are in IT, and he is gradually changing us over to anything SMART. Besides Smart TVs, we have 5 google homes and google minis, 1 Alexa DOT, smart switches throughout the house, Nest thermostat and Nest Protect Fire/Carbon Dioxide monitors. He’s gradually changing over the different light switches and wall outlets to smart units. I don’t have a say to be honest. This is his thing. But as he says, there isn’t much Google doesn’t already know about us. The added convenience of being able to ask Google create a reminder/Alarm/shopping list is something we like. We play music and sync it to all units when we’re having a pool party. And we have’t done it yet, but you can ask Google to play musical chairs. It’s also fun to ask her to tell us a joke, what does she think about Alexa/Siri etc.
We don’t have too much smart stuff in our house. We have a Nest thermometer, Ring doorbell and flood lights and a wifi garage door opener. I have come to love all of those things. The Nest came with the new house and it is nice to change the temp from my bed at night or turn the heat back on when we are coming home from vacation. There is a lot of theft in our neighborhood so we like the security of the exterior monitoring and knowing when our garage door has been left open. I don’t think any of those devices “listen” though. I refused to get a wifi baby monitor when the kids were little.
I’m with the majority here. I don’t want a smart home … until I do. I’m not discounting it, especially as I get older. My FIL was given a Google Home, and as he is going blind, can ask it for the time, to play music, or anything he wants to know that he would have in the past googled on his computer. So I guess my answer is, “Not yet.”
Genuine question to some of the other commenters – Why would you have more than two kinds of these devices (eg a Google home and Alexa)?
I won a google home at the company christmas party in 2017. I kept it unopened at the front door until I was able to give it away at a dirty Santa a few weeks ago. The privacy and security tradeoffs associated with smart devices is not worth the marginal convenience they provide. We will never, ever, have a smart home as long as I have a say in it.
If you have a cell phone that you use a lot, you’ve already ceded some of the privacy space–it’s got microphones and cameras that can be controlled from afar. We use smart devices for convenience–ie, to control plugs to lamps that are in hard to reach places. I like being able to easily turn them on and off.