
How the Internet of Things Limits Consumer Choice - sinak
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/internet-of-things-philips-hue-lightbulbs/421884/?single_page=true
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craigds
IMHO IoT is a bad idea.

Recently we had the choice of buying heat pumps with a standard infrared
remote control, or heat pumps with wifi.

You can control them from your ipad! As a bit of a hacker I'd love to play
with this and see if I could attach them to temperature sensors and smarts
around the house.

Tempting, but then a colleague pointed out that it almost certainly comes pre-
packaged with bullshit closed source software from a bullshit company, full of
bullshit security holes and probably never gets updates. Your chances of
plugging into it with a random python script are close to nil. If it ever
breaks, you'll have to pay $100 for some technically illiterate heat pump
repairman to try and diagnose the issues. Good luck with that, and no thanks.

~~~
VLM
This is a classic integration / systems type problem. I have a generic "far
north" HVAC system (aka killer efficient condensing furnace, mere afterthought
of an AC unit) and its connected to an Insteon compatible thermostat via
industry standard wiring and protocols (basically residential thermo is 20 mA
current loop for heat/fan/cool), and that's connected to misterhouse via the
usual insteon RF bridge and controller. Integrating it all is hopeless, like
late night infomercials for combination fishing pole/swiss army knife/spark
plug wrench gadgets. Its easier to debug industry standard components, also.

I messed around with it some years ago when it was new but haven't permanently
implemented anything. I ran into the following problems:

1) UI. When my MiL visits she's at the Asimov-ian technological level where
everything I do is at a high enough tech level to be magic, and
correspondingly she's scared/intimidated and its all just a non-starter. She
still has a round honeywell with a mercury switch at her house and
occasionally does the typical woman thing of adjusting it multiple times a day
to either 85 or 60 degrees while complaining "it doesn't work". To a lesser
extent my wife does the same thing, seeing as they're related I'm not
surprised. I've tested it and it works, its just that automatic control even
at the simple round honeywell thermostat level is beyond her, pretty much.
This will make smart thermostats a hard sell. Magic being interchangeable with
Magic, this makes smart thermostats a hard sell to most of the population, why
not just put a sticker on the existing thermostat like those stickers that
increase cell phone battery life 50% or reduce RF exposure by 100%, or
basically the entire audiophile industry in a nutshell, or astrology. I mean a
controls engineer KNOWS the bode stability plot analysis of that algorithm is
superior, but to the general public its just expensive, much harder to use,
astrology. Astrology being cheaper to implement than actual control theory, I
guarantee the IoT will be polluted by "smart" things that are actually dumber
than "dumb" things, but none the less very well marketed and likely very
successful sellers because they'll be cheaper.

2) Improvement is missing. I had some ideas that sucked, but were fun to try.
So cycle the ventilation fan on and off at some rate to save energy rather
than run all the time. Well that makes the place stuffy and if I wanted a
stuffy moldy house I'd have installed a smaller cheaper fan, I'm not paying
this kind of mortgage per month to choke or be chilly, etc. I ran into similar
problems with messing with temperature control, such that anything I did to
alter temperatures MOSTLY just reduced comfort. As far as saving money this
was not cheap back then and probably not even now, and I should have spent a
couple $$$ on yet more insulation, or even newer windows, or an ever more
efficient furnace, etc. The one protocol that was a winner WRT comfort was
slightly warmer temps in the morning when getting up and gradual lowering by
bedtime. A lot of IoT projects are like this, very techno cool nerdy
impressive display of hard work and solved engineering problems, but none the
less completely utterly useless in practice. Why, if I spend $300 and a lot of
hours, I can turn my nice comfy house into a drafty/stuffy dump, but its
cheaper just to spend $100K less on the house if you want to slum it.

Anyone talking about IoT should be required to watch the black and white
(free) Buster Keaton movie from about a century ago titled "electric house".
There's nothing new under the sun and back when electrification was a "thing"
there were plenty of crazy gadget ideas that could be made fun of (see the
movie) but had no long term impact. A century from now, 99%+ of IoT will look
to the future like Keaton's "electric house" looks to us. There is another
immense insight to "electric house" movie that arguably the biggest impact of
electricity to daily life is the microwave oven, which obviously was not
predictable. If there is any high impact IoT device in the future, it won't be
the 24352th model of thermostat, it'll be something unimaginable today, or at
least unimaginable to almost everyone. Aside from the multiple learning
aspects, Buster Keaton is hilarious so its worth the time.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _She still has a round honeywell with a mercury switch at her house and
> occasionally does the typical woman thing of adjusting it multiple times a
> day to either 85 or 60 degrees while complaining "it doesn't work". (...)
> I've tested it and it works, its just that automatic control even at the
> simple round honeywell thermostat level is beyond her, pretty much._

I think there's a missing UX opportunity here no one is taking. Instead of
showing the target temperature (and some symbols), show current temperature,
target temperature, a plot that shows expected change and have this data
refresh frequently (every second or so). Non-tech people have problems with
such devices because they don't trust them; they can't trust something they
don't understand, something which for them is doing god-knows what. They don't
have a model in their head (and temperature is felt in a way that you can't
always tell it's changing). So instead, let the machine show what it's doing
and what is an expected outcome. People want to know the machine is doing the
thing it's supposed to, so the machine should show that it is, in fact, doing
it. A plot, or even a text that tells "current temperature: XX, target: YY,
will stabilize at YY in 20 minutes" would be a good start.

> _There is another immense insight to "electric house" movie that arguably
> the biggest impact of electricity to daily life is the microwave oven_

I'd argue that those are, in order, washing machine, dishwasher and microwave
oven; the former two save _huge_ amounts of time for the person who would
otherwise have to wash clothes/dishes by hand. But the bigger point stands -
the most useful things are those that are considered... boring.

~~~
Chris2048
Yep, progress bar and desired temp eta.

Maybe add a 'turbo' button too :-D

------
fffrad
Many years ago, I owned a Radio Hub from Westinghouse. It required an internet
connection for it to work and I was totally fine with it. I got my weather
info from it, set my calendar reminders, and it had a bunch of other small
features. Pretty neat!

One day they stopped supporting it, and the whole thing became a brick. I
couldn't even play CDs on it because it used to get the CD info online.

Today's IoT may barely work well on a good day, but wait for when a company
drops support and you will be left with a brick.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _but wait for when a company drops support and you will be left with a
> brick._

How many times do you think this happens before the public wises up and the
market corrects the issue? My answer is "not many".

One bricked item, or knowing someone with a bricked item, will change people's
demands. Sort of like how it changed yours.

~~~
TeMPOraL
How many times SaaS startups have to disappear without a trace but a single
post about their and yours great journey and founders being happy you helped
them drink their drinks on a beach in hot summer, before people wise up?

Answer: quite a lot apparently, since it keeps happening and people _don 't_
wise up, and it has reached the point where the behaviour described above is a
standard practice (known as "exit"), and it's the reason many start a startup
in the first place. Such people pretty much intend to screw their customers
from day one, and apparently customers are happy to being screwed time after
time.

I don't see this changing for hardware.

------
coldtea
Internet of Things is the proverbial solution in search of a problem.

For those who thought that modern life wasn't easy or technology-filled enough
without refrigerators that order stuff for you and thermostats you can control
from your watch.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _For those who thought that modern life wasn 't easy or technology-filled
> enough_

This trope has been around for hundreds of years.

~~~
coldtea
> _This trope has been around for hundreds of years._

The same is true for this retort.

The thing is, just because it has been said for "hundreds of years" doesn't
mean it's always false when it's said.

It could be that (always false), of course. But it could also be partly true,
e.g. pointing to a real loss that we suffered because of the infusion of
technology in everyday life.

Here are some examples of technologically-caused issues that a lot of people,
if not most, could do without: environmental damage due to modern mining,
plastics, etc. Noise pollution. Cities designed around cars, that destroy the
human scale and prevent the kind of relationships and urban life fostered by
places like Manhattan, Vienna, Paris, etc. Technology as enabler of
surveillance and loss of privacy. Military technology that can blow the world
10 times over. The same-ization of the world and the cheapening of cities due
to global commerce, tourism, etc. Loss of quality time with friends and other
people in the era of the smartphone. That one might point at improvements in
other areas that offset these negatives/losses , doesn't mean there wasn't any
loss in the first place.

A last possible case, regarding the original complaint, is that while it might
be said for "hundreds of years" it could be especially true now. Just because
people might claim it's midnight from early morning doesn't mean that it wont
eventually be midnight.

And I'd argue that that's the case, myself.

If somebody complained about the prevalence of technology in the eighties (and
several people did), predicting that it will get to a point that we'll be so
depended on it, as to have cpus in every damn thing, including our keys,
shoes, microwaves, etc, they would have told him that he fell for the
"slippery slope" fallacy. Well, the Internet of Thing is the actual
realization of that slippery slope.

~~~
massysett
"environmental damage due to modern mining, plastics, etc."

Communicated using a network that wouldn't exist without modern mining and
plastics, and using a machine that wouldn't exist without modern mining and
plastics?

You could voluntarily give these things up. Indeed some communities (e.g.
Amish) forsake some technologies. Instead you are using these technologies,
enjoying them despite their ill effects, while claiming that most could do
without them.

~~~
coldtea
> _Communicated using a network that wouldn 't exist without modern mining and
> plastics, and using a machine that wouldn't exist without modern mining and
> plastics?_

Probably missed the part where I wrote: " _That one might point at
improvements in other areas that offset these negatives /losses , doesn't mean
there wasn't any loss in the first place_"

Just because something (e.g. plastics) had a useful result, doesn't mean all
of its results are useful, that it's sustainable in the long run (e.g. wont
come back to bite us in the ass), or that it's currently used optimally.

Besides, one can still acknowledge some harm despite the fact that he himself
uses what's harmful (e.g. I don't like that pigs are killed for it, but bacon
is delicious). That's not "hypocritical", it's just weighting pros and cons.

And it's not like it's a black or white thing either. Acknowledging the harm
makes us able to make decisions about how to improve things. E.g, to give an
extreme example regarding your question, one could very well say: I'm ok with
using plastics for important things like computers, but not with the tons of
plastic garbage every year but making tons of disposable plastic BS from it
(e.g. see the ban on plastic shopping bags in some places).

------
enraged_camel
Not really related to the article itself, but I'm developing a serious
aversion to the phrase "Internet of Things". It's part of the same trend that
created the term "Web 2.0": full of hype and bullshit.

Why not just call it "Internet" like we always have? Was it not made of
"things" before?

~~~
liw
I maintain that IoT is short for "Insecurity of Things", not "Internet of
Things". Makes the IoT hype so much easier to deal with.

~~~
isolate
Internet of Thrones :)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Internet of Toilets. Fits well with Cloud-to-Butt extension.

~~~
Chris2048
Uh, Butt-to-cloud, surely?

I might want to tweet my poops, naturally; but what data does my butt need?

------
teddyh
Every sysadmin and programmer here has had problems with printers, right?
Weird behavior, bugs, crashes, etc. Now expand this to _every single
electrical device you own_. That is the Internet of Things.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's not the worst of it.

Every user here had problems with printing experience - bullshit crap
"management" software that bloats the system, expected lifetime of a printer
being around one year, hugely overpriced cartridges that have absurd DRMs
(chips that just have a decrementing "time to stop working" counter is pure
evil). Now expand _that_ to every single electrical device you own. That is
the Internet of Things - fly-by-night SaaS startup's wet dream incarnate.

------
ekianjo
> every game console has its own game cartridge format

It took me a while to realize the author was not living in the 80s, but
talking about portable game consoles instead.

------
Perixoog
Why can't we have the things without the networking stack, then plug them into
something (upgradable and open source) with a networking stack?

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fcanela
I do not know why so much hate against IoT.

I have several devices which gives me useful data for quantified self
proposes. I am also happy with my IP cameras and smart TV.

Like others, I would love to see these devices better secured. I would love
them to be less cloud-dependant. But being like they are right now, they
provide value.

------
sanxiyn
Matthew Garrett's article "The Internet of Incompatible Things" is topical
here:
[http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/37522.html](http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/37522.html)

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frik
"In the 1990s, Microsoft used a strategy it called “embrace, extend,
extinguish,” in which it gradually added proprietary capabilities to products
that already adhered to widely used standards."

What about TypeScript? What about "class" syntax in ES6? (who lobbied for it?)
Microsoft still uses the same tactics. They tried it with JScript. Now they
open source their JS and TS compatible engine and VS Code (contains mainly TS
code).

