Smart Devices, Dumb Humans
Okay, having a fridge with a touchscreen was cool at first. Useless but cool nonetheless. But the trend to put useless screens and useless internet connectivity into devices that don’t need those is older than one might think. One of the first notable ones was the Internet Digital DIOS, pictured below, a smart fridge made by LG in 2000 (you read that right).
It cost a lot, and I mean a lot. But before telling you how much do take into account this:
55 researchers worked on it, from 1997.
LG injected over $16 million into the project.
And to be fair it at least had the merit that it consumed half as much power than typical fridges and only produced 23 db of noise (a whisper is 25 db).
So alright, the project was a massive commercial failure. Supply was not the problem, however demand was in this case.
But why? Was it an obscure reason that I’m about to tell you!? Well maybe not. It cost more than $20’000. WOULD NO ONE at LG or in contact with the project in their right mind approve this price tag and not think it would lead to a big commercial failure?
At least it was a good technological showcase at the time! And to give context, car manufacturers like to sometimes make fancy futuristic cars to showcase their tech and their future design trends. Tech companies do exactly the same, and this was probably the case. But why I talked about this fridge is to contrast that with products that do not even make marketing and/or PR sense even some 20 odd years later.
Note: this article might feel be a bit harsh on the products. But comedy effect aside, they absolutely need to be taken out of the context they operate in, as our hyper-connected world is the one to be blamed.
Product 1: The Aqualisa Smart Shower Controller
It’s literally a shower temperature & power remote.
So controlling the shower temperature and water flow with a digital waterproof screen doesn’t sound too bad? Probably a bit expensive (£120) for what it is but let’s see what they have to at least offer, and give them the benefit of the doubt.
They have an app on both IOS and Android app stores, it is advertised as an app that lets you control the shower. So on top of having now a brilliant and logical reason to bring your phone to your shower, you’re giving mischievous siblings, parents, friends and I the ability to ruin your sacred shower. So that is strike 1.
Strike 2 is having Hey Google and Alexa integrated in this device. Is your shower too hot or way too cold and the controls not working? Hope you can shout really loud so the mic hears you over the painful shower!
But hey at least your dog can have his own customized shower settings? Isn’t the power to give them the perfect shower great, given how much we irrationally love them?
Oh yeah let’s make an ad about it:
Is that worth the Strike 3 that is the frigging $700 WORTH OF SHOWER PRODUCTS, NEEDED TO MAKE USE OF THIS £120 remote in the first place?
To be fair they are actually known in the UK to make really good shower sets and they have normal looking shower controls as well, but once again lets take things out of context!
Product 2: The (Smart) Car Rental
Car rentals are a mess. You need to sign so much stuff and add in a hefty insurance protection. On top of that the usual deposit, it usually costs more than the double of the advertised car rent price itself to rent a car.
So what happens when Silicon Valley tries to Uber-rize the concept? You get cheaper rent cars but that are not only GPS tracked but also 3G/4G tracked (GPS does not depends on 3G/4G and vice versa). It allows them for a better prediction power of who is using the car correctly, and they can even remote lock or immobilize your car if you’re not respecting their terms and conditions. However that relies on you have 24/7 data connectivity. That sounds alright until it doesn’t.
But what could possibly go wrong when the sharing economy forgets anything about roadside logic?
Oh maybe this:
So they were stuck in a random Californian forest since their rental car could not track what they were doing, cause you know, they were in the middle of a forest !?!?!?
Read the twitter thread, it is quite funny, but if you don’t have time or don’t want to, here is what they essentially lost:
Six hours in a random forest for what at first sounded like quite a cool Californian weekend trip :(
2 tow trucks, the first one could not get them to move because of a software error. It sounds like the rental software actually overrides the mechanical functions of the car meaning the car could not move at all until the firmware was fixed.
“20 calls” to customer service, but to be fair how can an intern or outsourced call center actually understand an issue the design team did not even anticipate to begin with?
All of this since their car needed to be rebooted because of a bug and a low cell signal. Tech gone wrong once again.
Although not really linked to the overall subject, I have a semi-relevant tweet to mention:
Look what happens when a design team actually does their job really well but at the same time doesn’t. (It is about Tesla cars and how their smart self driving experience behaves with green lights)
It might be a bug fixed soon. but there is one specific point that relates to this article. Even one of the “smartest” products in the market can become dumber than a battery-less remote if given the right opportunity. Imagine what would have happened if those lights were red, if a car misreads the speed limit, if it mistakes a cat as a plastic bag? Utter chaos.
Product 3: Cool Smartglasses 😎
Oh this is a recent one.
Rayban is hella cool right?
Facebook as well? (ok maybe just insta and whatsapp but same thing)
Here’s their new baby:
Yup, sunglasses with a camera and small speakers. Doesn’t sound too bad?
Imagine being recorded with it though. Kind of creepy especially when you can’t notice it.
But they’re not THAT dumb, they thought of everything. Top left of the camera lens you see a small led that blinks white when the glasses are recording. Ooof thank god for that, wouldn’t anyone filming me like that.
Well except:
And even then not everyone is going to notice, look at this innocent video recording, now imagine it is someone filming you in a less innocent context, or imagine just how Facebook will use that data to further violate your privacy rights by dataming even more aspects of your life:
The Danger
The goal of these devices is at the end of the day to make money. To make money by inflating the selling price, but also of the new data they now can sell about you.
The goal isn’t to serve you in a better way.
I don’t want to sound like a lunatic so at least let me quote some less lunatic journalist from back in the good old days of 2014:
“For example, who would want an internet-driven weather monitor for their home, when one could just go to weather.com and find out if it’s going to rain.”
Why make things smart when the dumber version is totally ok for the next 10 or 15 years?
Also another thing is at stake.
Your security.
Why do it when almost all of these devices can and will be hacked (bar a few products, they don’t give a damm about cybersecurity):
It can get really messy really quick.
Like that time a Casino was hacked because of the smart thermometer they had for their aquarium. Oops
Or when a hacker used a baby monitor to terrorize a family.
Or when a jeep was hacked, literally putting you in a death box. Which is sadly suspected to be the cause of death of a journalist allegedly investigating the FBI.
