Dvorak is hilariously skeptical of “smart home” technology in his latest: Bad News? Blame Intel and Microsoft. Funny (intentionally?) comments include:
Microsoft and Bill Gates are also into this digital “smart home” idea. Each new iteration of software promotes the idea of the Media Center, along with notions such as the networking of music around the house.
These are all pursuits of the idle rich. The idea that I can tell my PVR to record a movie while I’m driving around in the Benz has little to do with normal reality. This has everything to do with people having too much money and being unable to figure out what to do with it.
Except for the very wealthy, and bored and compulsive engineers who have to wire stuff constantly, nobody cares about a smart home. Even people who are well off and could possibly afford some of these smart-home amenities seldom care. I have a two-story house. I have a thermostat upstairs and one downstairs. They are manual clunkers. I adjust them by hand. I walk upstairs to do it. I don’t need to do it from the computer, I’m at the computer too much already. I need to walk around more. I am not alone in this thinking.
Above all, I do not need to be streaming MP3 files from my computer over the wireless net to the kitchen so I can listen to songs from the computer everywhere I go. What kind of nutjob needs that sort of thing? What is the point? Do I have to be inundated with commercial music everywhere I go? How about a set of wind chimes? Those work if I need a lot of racket 24/7. And they are a lot cheaper.
And to those who will write in to the forum telling me I’m an old coot who “doesn’t get it,” you can take a flying leap. I’m in the majority here. You’re not.
What seems to have happened is that too many folks at Intel and Microsoft have too much money and are advanced enough in the companies’ hierarchies to influence the direction of product development. “What people want are smart homes!” “I want to be able to listen to my entire MP3 collection anywhere I go!” “I want to be able to start a pot of coffee while driving in my car.”
These are all decadent needs that contribute nothing to society. All BS. If Intel and Microsoft would push their technologies without getting involved in these “benefits,” we’d all be better off.
This curmudgeon and techno-phobe agrees!
(Link courtesy Paul Comeaux)
12:41 am on September 30, 2004
