How long have we been talking about the Connected Home? I think I first encountered the concept in 1995 when I read the book “The Road Ahead” by Bill Gates. The book was a gee-whiz set of predictions about the world to come, and I remember this about his description of the home of the future: you’d wear some kind of identifying electronic gadget, and the home would sense your movement from room to room and adjust heat, lights and music throughout as you moved around. It would learn your preferences and respond accordingly. Coming soon!
So
here we are twenty years later and I’ve just finished reading the latest issue
of CNET magazine, which has a special seven-article report on ‘The Modern Smart
Home’. And
it looks like we’ll soon have houses that will adjust heat, light and music as
we move from room to room, except now we’ll control it all from a smartphone
app.
Yes,
it felt like déjà vu all over again as I read CNET’s description of the new
gadgetry that awaits us, and it caused me to reflect on how far we’ve NOT come
in 20 years. To be fair, CNET described products that are either on the market
or in prototype or start-up mode right now, so you could, with money and
determination, actually put all this together if you were so inclined. That
wasn’t true twenty years ago. But I was also struck by a lack of vision of
where this idea could really go.
The
technology for making a home smart seems to be based on our presumed desire to make
small tasks automatic. Room lighting is a good example: no longer do we need to
be burdened with having to flick on a wall switch when entering a room. Motion detectors
will take care of that, or we can whip out a smartphone and adjust the
lighting with an app!
It’s
surprising (well, maybe not surprising) that much of the connected home technology
revolves around doing things with an app. Do I really need to fumble for my
phone in order to open the automatic garage door, when I also have a gadget on my
visor (or a button already built into the car) to do that? Is turning lights on
and off with an app really better than the wall switches we’ve used forever?
Years ago, I downloaded an app on my iPhone that simulated my Verizon remote
control. Now I could control the TV from my phone, instead of the controller
that was sitting on the table right next to me. Well, one fewer gadget to buy
batteries for, I guess.
Home
security is a big deal in the smart home and there are a lot of products out
there, now touting how they can notify you via your phone if there’s been an
intrusion. Webcams throughout the house can also be monitored via phone.
AT&T is making a big bet on this market with an array of products called
Digital Life services.
Our
landscaping is ready to go high tech too, according to CNET. They list eight
vendors that are marketing products like weather sensors, plant sensors and
irrigation controllers, which will get your shrubs on Wi-Fi. If only these
gadgets would pull up the weeds.
If
you sense that I was underwhelmed by the real usefulness of the connected home products,
you’re right. The actual human labor saved is minimal and I believe all this
gadgetry serves a need that few of us will feel. Either we’re still waiting for
the visionary products that will make high tech homes a reality, or we don’t
need them in the first place. I’m still expecting more from this category: the
connected home is an idea whose time has still not come.
1 comment:
I'm with you, Howard, some of the advances are useful, like being able to turn lights on remotely, but I really don't need the refrigerator to tell me I need milk. I can see that.
Years ago a friend wanted to impress me with his new digital watch. He'd show me how all you had to do was push a button to see the time.
I showed him my Seiko. All you had to do was look at it to see the time:-)
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