Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. You welcome the Forward Thinking, the podcast that
Speaker 1: looks at the future and says, guess that this must
Speaker 1: be the place. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey,
Speaker 1: I've got a question for you. Yeah, do you ever
Speaker 1: feel like your home might be intellectually inferior? There there? Yes,
Speaker 1: this past year I have I have you well two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, I used several colorful metaphors to describe certain
Speaker 1: aspects of my home as a dumb stuff was happening.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know it's it's things breakdown and don't
Speaker 1: repair themselves. Doors don't open for you, your closet doesn't
Speaker 1: give you what you want to wear in the morning
Speaker 1: you have to go looking for it, dangers everything on
Speaker 1: Final Jeopardy, and then forgets to perform it in the question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: My my biggest pet peeve is that when I walked
Speaker 1: through the door, Gallivant is not automatically playing on my TV.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just I don't get it. You may
Speaker 1: guess from that awkward introduction that today we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about smart home and the rest of it is
Speaker 1: going to be smooth sailor. Yeah, Jonathan, Yeah, did you
Speaker 1: recently go to c E S. I did recently go
Speaker 1: to CEF the Consumer Electronics Show. Are you sure that
Speaker 1: S doesn't stand for circus spelled wrong? Well, it doesn't
Speaker 1: stand for anything these days. It's just c S. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that used to be Consumer Electronics Show, but now it's
Speaker 1: just CES. Sort of like that, you know, they they
Speaker 1: they've decided to go super celeb on us. It's like KFC.
Speaker 1: It's like these letters could stand for any right, right,
Speaker 1: and Uh. At ce S there are a lot of
Speaker 1: big themes that came out that year, lots of stuff
Speaker 1: that you know, the various companies were really focusing on,
Speaker 1: and one of the biggest was smart home technology. And
Speaker 1: this is something that we've seen at c S year
Speaker 1: after year, but this year was kind of like critical mass.
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, this was where I suddenly
Speaker 1: saw more examples of it. In fact, there was an
Speaker 1: entire section of the show floor set aside just for
Speaker 1: smart homes and uh. In fact, one one exhibitor had
Speaker 1: built out a booth that was a home and you
Speaker 1: walked through it and saw that saw how the technology worked.
Speaker 1: Within the context of a home. But we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk kind of all about smart homes and sort of
Speaker 1: where the idea came from and where it's going and
Speaker 1: some of the pros and cons of it. But to
Speaker 1: begin with, I just wanted to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about where where this whole automation and smart home technology
Speaker 1: got its start. Sure, because it's not actually a new idea. No, no,
Speaker 1: So you're going to take us back to smart caves,
Speaker 1: they're not quite that far. I'm gonna go to the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, and that was when we started seeing uh,
Speaker 1: electronic and mechanical appliances first hit the market for the
Speaker 1: general consumer. Now, there were earlier examples in the nineteenth centuries,
Speaker 1: sort of the predecessors for the technology we depend upon,
Speaker 1: but we really saw the mature in the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: So this is stuff like you know, washers and dryers
Speaker 1: and dishwashers and uh, you know, eventually other things like
Speaker 1: toasters that wouldn't burn your house down and things of
Speaker 1: that nature. So this was all about saving effort, labor, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and it actually made a huge impact. We did
Speaker 1: a series of episodes on on washing machines and dryers
Speaker 1: in uh in text app Yeah, back when I was
Speaker 1: on the show, and it's it's pretty it's actually pretty
Speaker 1: interesting stuff, right, and uh, really interesting to see. I
Speaker 1: mean there's a whole political, kind of controversial part of
Speaker 1: the washing machine, for example, people who should have gotten
Speaker 1: credit and didn't. But there's also just the overall story
Speaker 1: of how can we create labor saving devices so that
Speaker 1: people can maximize their time and not spend it all
Speaker 1: doing backbreaking labor that could be handled automatically. Um So
Speaker 1: that was sort of the the germ of the idea, right,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until the nineteen sixties that we start
Speaker 1: seeing kind of a giant leap forward on this. Now
Speaker 1: we had seen technology start to take on more and
Speaker 1: more automated style roles. Like the original washing machines, you
Speaker 1: actually had to monitor them, you had to change them,
Speaker 1: turn them on and turn them off manually. They didn't
Speaker 1: have automatic shutoffs or timers or things like that that
Speaker 1: developed throughout the decades. But the nineteen sixties we go
Speaker 1: kind of a a jump ahead, I would say, with
Speaker 1: the Echo four, which was a home automation system. It
Speaker 1: was also known as the Electronic Computing Home Operator and
Speaker 1: It was made out of surplus electronic parts and it
Speaker 1: was housed in a tall walnut cabinet, and um it
Speaker 1: was I missed the days of putting electronic X in
Speaker 1: wood case. Yeah yeah, kind of like the old televisions
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah. So well, this thing could supposedly handle finances,
Speaker 1: the home finances. It could compute shopping lists, so if
Speaker 1: you said you wanted to make a certain thing and
Speaker 1: you told it what ingredients you had, it could tell
Speaker 1: you which ones you were missing and therefore you need
Speaker 1: to go and get them. Um. It could also control
Speaker 1: the thermostatic, could predict the weather and even turn appliances
Speaker 1: on and off. It was designed by Jim Sutherland, who
Speaker 1: was an employee at Westinghouse, and he built it for himself.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, I'm skeptical about how good this thing
Speaker 1: was at those tasks you just list, well, you just listed,
Speaker 1: and it never it was never put into any kind
Speaker 1: of production, like this was literally his his home project.
Speaker 1: Probably telling right, didn't go into production. I mean also
Speaker 1: computer technology at the time being what it was, I'd
Speaker 1: like to think of it as operating under the same
Speaker 1: sort of rules as the Pewee Herman Rube Goldberg device
Speaker 1: at the beginning of Pewee's big adventure to feed his dog,
Speaker 1: you know that kind of thing. Um. There is also,
Speaker 1: uh the Kitchen computer, which was another device that was
Speaker 1: meant to automate the home. This one came out the
Speaker 1: year after Echo four was sort of um displayed in
Speaker 1: like a popular mechanics article. Uh So, this one came
Speaker 1: from Honeywell, and it could store recipes and tell you
Speaker 1: what sort of meals you could cook based upon the
Speaker 1: ingredients you had available. So if you said, like, I've
Speaker 1: got these five ingredients, what can I make with this?
Speaker 1: And it could give you a list of different recipes
Speaker 1: to try. Uh, all of that convenience could be yours
Speaker 1: for the low low price of ten thousand, six hundred
Speaker 1: dollars in nineteen mid nineteen sixties money. That's like the
Speaker 1: cost of a couple of houses at that time. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but hey do you'd never have to worry about what
Speaker 1: to make for dinner because you just tell it, like,
Speaker 1: I got a bottle to catch up some Jolke cold
Speaker 1: be nuts. What can I whip up here's a recipe
Speaker 1: for lasagna? Um So, by the nineteen eighties, home automation
Speaker 1: was becoming more of a reality, although in these cases
Speaker 1: it was a lot of contract or work. So if
Speaker 1: you wanted to have a system put in, you had
Speaker 1: to go out hire a contractor. They would come in
Speaker 1: and usually the various elements of your home automation would
Speaker 1: actually rely on infrared sensors and transmitters, so the same
Speaker 1: sort of technology that most remote controls rely on today.
Speaker 1: You know, you may not realize this. When the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies remote controls were mostly well, at least some were
Speaker 1: using sonic signals. Yeah, where you would press a button
Speaker 1: and I have a little piece of metal inside the
Speaker 1: remote control, and when it flexed, it would give off
Speaker 1: ultrasonic frequencies and the television would respond to it, which
Speaker 1: is why if you dropped your change and there was
Speaker 1: a hard floor, you could accidentally change the channel, or
Speaker 1: if you played with a slinky near the TV, you
Speaker 1: could affect it. But eventually it was pretty cool. I
Speaker 1: actually had one of those TVs when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and I could I could have a slinky and play
Speaker 1: with it and things would happen on the TV. And
Speaker 1: I thought, I guess I should be glad that Palter
Speaker 1: Guist had not come out yet. So at any rate,
Speaker 1: the the infrared sensor technology began to come down in price,
Speaker 1: and that meant we could incorporate in more and more stuff.
Speaker 1: But this meant that you had a remote control to
Speaker 1: handle things, right, It wasn't truly automated in the sense
Speaker 1: that we think of today. It was just you were
Speaker 1: you had a step removed. You didn't have to go
Speaker 1: and turn on a switch or plug something in. But
Speaker 1: uh it was also a niche market. It was pretty
Speaker 1: expensive because usually you had to have, like I said,
Speaker 1: a contractor come in and install this stuff. It wasn't
Speaker 1: plug and play. Uh, so it really limited the number
Speaker 1: of people who could actually do this. You know, I
Speaker 1: kept on hearing about home automation. It was very much
Speaker 1: a bleeding edge adopter kind of thing at that point.
Speaker 1: So by the late ninety nineties as when we first
Speaker 1: started seeing appliances that could connect into a computer network,
Speaker 1: not just have some sort of sensor on it that
Speaker 1: would allow it to operate when you use a remote control,
Speaker 1: but something that could interact with a network through WiFi
Speaker 1: or a wired connection. So this is when the first
Speaker 1: first start seeing things like networked refrigerators or networked washers
Speaker 1: or network dryers. They weren't really that good. They didn't
Speaker 1: do a lot of things that would have necessitated them
Speaker 1: to be connected. When they were first coming out, it
Speaker 1: was really a novelty. I remember the first time I
Speaker 1: saw one. I looked at and I thought, oh, that's
Speaker 1: really cool. Um, why would you do that? Like, what
Speaker 1: what's the benefit? And like the benefits were pretty tenuous.
Speaker 1: You could you could right yourself a program and see
Speaker 1: to control your washer. It was you know, it involved
Speaker 1: a lot of like like refrigerators, the example I always
Speaker 1: think of it, It involved a lot of work on
Speaker 1: the part of the consumer for it to have any
Speaker 1: meaningful impacts, things like logging the stuff that's going into
Speaker 1: your refrigerator, so that way, when you're are at work
Speaker 1: and you're thinking, oh, I would like to make such
Speaker 1: and such, do I have all the things I need?
Speaker 1: But it would mean that you were the one who
Speaker 1: had to actually maintain essentially like a database inventory, which
Speaker 1: does not sound appealing to me. That just seems like
Speaker 1: a different type of labor that I have to do.
Speaker 1: Why would that even be connected to the fridge. You
Speaker 1: could just keep a spreadsheet on your computer. Yeah, good,
Speaker 1: good point. An excellent point. I mean, yeah, at the
Speaker 1: point that you're logging something in Excel anyway, Like you
Speaker 1: don't really need to have your fridge send you a
Speaker 1: facts telling you to get more eggs, right, unless you're
Speaker 1: in back to the future too, in which case all
Speaker 1: communication is done to facts. Yeah, we've established that, done
Speaker 1: by multiple duplicates. By the end of two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: your fridge will be facing you repeatedly throughout the day
Speaker 1: and through all of your rooms in your house, all
Speaker 1: of which have their own facts, including your closets, including
Speaker 1: your closets, um so all caps you've got food poisoning,
Speaker 1: that explains the vomiting. So the the way the automation
Speaker 1: has changed a lot over the last couple of years
Speaker 1: is that again technology has continued to get less expensive.
Speaker 1: Like the basic sensors, the basic connectors that allow us
Speaker 1: to network things together have all come come down in price,
Speaker 1: which means that there are a lot more consumer level options, right.
Speaker 1: And I think we're also just now getting to the
Speaker 1: point where some of these applications might actually be useful,
Speaker 1: Like they really do increase your convenience in certain cases. Right,
Speaker 1: And we've got we've got a lot of development, not
Speaker 1: just in the hardware side, but the software side, which
Speaker 1: is where a lot of that functionality is coming from.
Speaker 1: It's not, you know, the the hardware is not demonstrably
Speaker 1: that different from the earlier generations. It's not like a
Speaker 1: smart refrigerator is that different from a regular refrigerator. But
Speaker 1: the apps that are designed around it to allow you
Speaker 1: to leverage that technology have matured over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years. And I think that's why smart home technology
Speaker 1: is starting to hit it big because we are are
Speaker 1: our user interface has improved to the point where now
Speaker 1: people can say, oh, I get it now, now it
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah. I would say also that we have
Speaker 1: a lot of unrealized capacity now. I mean, we're at
Speaker 1: a stage technologically where you could have fridge that actually
Speaker 1: could log everything you put in it without you having
Speaker 1: to intervene. But it would require stuff that we don't do,
Speaker 1: like say putting r F I D tags on all
Speaker 1: of our food products or something like that. You can
Speaker 1: maybe have some sort of scanner essentially attach a scanner
Speaker 1: to the to the front of the fridge that would
Speaker 1: read a UPC code or something. Right. Yeah, But so
Speaker 1: I'd say we are closer to sort of the fantasy
Speaker 1: of the smart home than we were before, even if
Speaker 1: even if in a lot of cases it's not actually realized,
Speaker 1: we could do it now. Yeah, and there are several
Speaker 1: examples I thought I would give. Actually I'm just going
Speaker 1: to do three because obviously if if we wanted to,
Speaker 1: we could have an episode. Yeah, they're There are hundreds
Speaker 1: of products on the market that fall into home automation
Speaker 1: and smart home technology, but just to kind of give
Speaker 1: you a very brief broad overview of some of the options.
Speaker 1: One is sort of the plug and play approach, which
Speaker 1: is where instead of you going in and replacing a
Speaker 1: specific system like the lighting or the security of your home,
Speaker 1: you have these these modules that essentially plug into wall sockets.
Speaker 1: That's what where they get their power. They connect to
Speaker 1: your network and then you plug stuff into them and
Speaker 1: that allows you to have remote access to the power
Speaker 1: that goes to that appliance. So Belkan has the we
Speaker 1: Mo switch plus Motion, which is a plug in play
Speaker 1: automation gadget that does exactly that. Right, You you plug
Speaker 1: this thing into the wall, you plug your up your
Speaker 1: appliance into the sensor. You use a smartphone Apple to
Speaker 1: access it, so you can turn it on and off
Speaker 1: it will. Now clearly this only works if whatever gadget
Speaker 1: is plugged into the Wemo has a permanent on feature. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you are talking about something like a lamp,
Speaker 1: that's very easy. You turn the lamp to the on
Speaker 1: position when you activate the Wemo, then the lamp is
Speaker 1: gonna come on. When you turn it off remotely, the
Speaker 1: lamp goes off. Other devices obviously they have more input
Speaker 1: than that. You know, you need to do something more
Speaker 1: than just turn it on, and this will not help
Speaker 1: you with that. So if you plug your toaster into
Speaker 1: one of these things, it's not gonna push the lever
Speaker 1: down so that you get toast. It'll it'll provide power
Speaker 1: to it, but it won't it won't actually activate the
Speaker 1: toaster toaster oven. Yeah, I was just thinking, probably don't
Speaker 1: want to remotely activate that when you're when you're not home,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to but maybe croc pot, you know
Speaker 1: something like that, where you're like, oh, I just want
Speaker 1: to have this thing's gonna take four hours to cook,
Speaker 1: It's gonna be on a certain level of heat that
Speaker 1: I feel comfortable with. I don't want to have to
Speaker 1: come home to start it. I don't want it to
Speaker 1: just be on warm for all day. So at some
Speaker 1: point in the day I'm going to go onto my
Speaker 1: smartphone app and turn my crock pot on. Now I'm hungry. Thanks,
Speaker 1: thanks Internet. Um. Another example is the nest thermostat, the
Speaker 1: learning thermostat. And we've talked about this on I think
Speaker 1: we've talked about four we're thinking. I know I've talked
Speaker 1: about on tech stuff. UM. This is the thermostat that
Speaker 1: came from a couple of engineers who used to work
Speaker 1: at Apple, and then they developed this smart thermostat UH.
Speaker 1: The place for birds to live, a smart thermostat and
Speaker 1: home for birds, right, That's why it's called nests. In
Speaker 1: this case, the the nest is is your is your
Speaker 1: little nest at home, and you want you want your
Speaker 1: nest to be comfy. So the thermostat has a lot
Speaker 1: of features that are very easy to explain to people,
Speaker 1: like the fact that you can remotely change the temperature
Speaker 1: on your thermostat no matter where you happen to be
Speaker 1: used the app, you connect to the internet, you change it.
Speaker 1: Your your nest is UH is hooked into your home
Speaker 1: WiFi system. It gets the command changes it in that
Speaker 1: way your your house will the climate control will kick in,
Speaker 1: whether it's heat or air conditioning or whatever. So this
Speaker 1: is useful obviously if you want to be able to
Speaker 1: adjust the temperature to maximize your eco friendliness and not
Speaker 1: run it when no one's home. But the thing is
Speaker 1: the Nest also has a microprocessor and an algorithm that
Speaker 1: allows it to learn your behaviors and do this on
Speaker 1: its own, so that you don't have to send it
Speaker 1: the commands. Right, You don't have to say, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm at the office now, let's turn the heat off,
Speaker 1: or I'm coming home, turn on the air conditioning because
Speaker 1: it's really hot outside. So that way when I get
Speaker 1: home in half an hour, it'll be nice and cool
Speaker 1: in my house. The Nest, their amstetics itself starts to
Speaker 1: learn what your routine is and anticipates it ahead of
Speaker 1: time and and makes those changes for you, which is
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. And that's really where we're getting at with
Speaker 1: the smart It's not just the connectivity, but the fact
Speaker 1: that it can start to anticipate what you want. Then
Speaker 1: we have the Phillips Hugh light bulbs. Have you guys
Speaker 1: seen these? I love thee I almost bought some they're
Speaker 1: a little more dim than I would prefer. I would
Speaker 1: them to be a bit brighter. But they are beautiful
Speaker 1: and they can change different colors. They have led in them.
Speaker 1: You can use a smartphone app to adjust it, so
Speaker 1: you can change like whatever you like if you want, Hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, my living room is gonna have neon
Speaker 1: green light for tonight. I could do that, or I
Speaker 1: can be like, let's go purple. Could do that. But
Speaker 1: on top of that, there's the smartphone. Have you seen
Speaker 1: the smartphone app Lauren? Okay, they have a smartphone app
Speaker 1: where it listens to the TV shows you watch, and
Speaker 1: for certain TV shows, depending upon what's going on on
Speaker 1: the screen, it will match the lighting in your room
Speaker 1: to match the mood on screen. It gives you TV
Speaker 1: mood lighting. Yeah, exactly. So like the detectives are going
Speaker 1: into a dark room, your lights come down, the there's
Speaker 1: there's like a photographer flashing pictures. Your your lights are
Speaker 1: flashing in sync with the TV program. I don't think
Speaker 1: I want That sounds horrible, but I'd give it try.
Speaker 1: I wanted, I mean, I'm interested. I wanted to all
Speaker 1: my all my rooms, and I want speakers going to
Speaker 1: all my rooms, and I want the app and all
Speaker 1: my rooms so that my house is just constantly flashing,
Speaker 1: like and I want to just watch the omen over
Speaker 1: and over. That's all I want. Oh yeah, I wonder
Speaker 1: if it responds to the sound of lightning strikes. It's
Speaker 1: it's the way it was designed. I can't remember which
Speaker 1: shows in particular it's it's matched up to. It's only
Speaker 1: a couple, but it because obviously, you know, in order
Speaker 1: to pull this off, you already have to know what
Speaker 1: happens in the show to match the lighting. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's not a sound cue that it's that it's listening for.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a digital programmed sound que I'm sure,
Speaker 1: just waiting waiting for Homer to say, sure is dark
Speaker 1: in here, and then like all the lights come off,
Speaker 1: go off, and you're like, huh. If I could just
Speaker 1: do a really good Homer voice, I could freak people out.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but that's just that's just three products on
Speaker 1: the market. There are so many of the dozens and dozens,
Speaker 1: and they cover everything, right, they're covering you know. I
Speaker 1: just talked about some very simple systems, but things like
Speaker 1: you could you could have smart locks on your doors,
Speaker 1: so that you could use a code or a Bluetooth
Speaker 1: device where your luck um unlocks automatically when that device
Speaker 1: gets within range. Or you could have security system like
Speaker 1: video surveillance that that's a very popular one that you
Speaker 1: could have as part of your smart home. I'd imagine
Speaker 1: a very good application of something like a smart lock
Speaker 1: would be being able to let somebody into your house
Speaker 1: remotely you being there. Yeah, there are quite a few
Speaker 1: versions I've seen. Some of them allow for you to
Speaker 1: give a a like a four digit code to somebody
Speaker 1: that only works within a span of time. So let's
Speaker 1: say there's yeah, exactly. So like you have a dog walker.
Speaker 1: Let's say and the dog walker says, okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be at your place between twelve and two. You could say,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna be safe. I'm gonna go from
Speaker 1: eleven thirty to two thirty. This pen will give you
Speaker 1: access to my house, and then after two thirty it
Speaker 1: no longer works, and before eleven thirty it doesn't work. Uh,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. In other cases, you could just
Speaker 1: do it remotely yourself, so that they could call you
Speaker 1: when they get to your doorstep and and yeah, and
Speaker 1: you could just press the like unlock that door button
Speaker 1: on your phone and let them in. And even at
Speaker 1: the at ces we even saw one that was a
Speaker 1: doggie door, a smart home doggie door where you could
Speaker 1: you could allow the doggie door to swing free so
Speaker 1: the dog can go outside. When the dog comes back in,
Speaker 1: you can lock it in place again. And you know
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, which I thought was kind of neat. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: you can see where the convenience comes in. You can
Speaker 1: see where some of the benefits are to kind of
Speaker 1: segue into benefits. That remote access is a big one obviously, right,
Speaker 1: the ability to control the systems of your house wherever
Speaker 1: you happen to be. That could be for lots of reasons.
Speaker 1: It could be that, again, you're trying to save money,
Speaker 1: so you don't want to spend you know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to you don't want to be consuming electricity when
Speaker 1: you don't need it. Um, it could be that you're
Speaker 1: doing it for security. So you might be going out
Speaker 1: of town for a few days, but you want your
Speaker 1: lights to come on as if someone's home so that
Speaker 1: you don't give the indication that hey, there's an empty
Speaker 1: house here. That kind of stuff, UM, A lot of
Speaker 1: different reasons why you would want to remote access and
Speaker 1: the idea of algorithms that could learn your behavior and
Speaker 1: anticipate it. That's really really intriguing. Oh yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: real sexy. I mean that's kind of the just just
Speaker 1: making things easier again, like like making things easier for
Speaker 1: you so that you can devote your brain power to
Speaker 1: whatever else you want. Exactly. Yeah. I said that you
Speaker 1: could put it towards enlightened pursuits, like watching The Bachelor.
Speaker 1: It's trying to come up with the show I would
Speaker 1: least likely watch, and that one was the first that
Speaker 1: I thought of. Um, but at any rate, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's exactly that idea of being able to to save labor,
Speaker 1: save effort, to have kind of an effortless existence in
Speaker 1: your home as much as possible, and the mundane things
Speaker 1: get taken care of. So if we look at the
Speaker 1: ideal smart home and we go forward ten years, and
Speaker 1: this might even be a conservative vision of the smart
Speaker 1: home of the future, I imagine this scenario. You come home,
Speaker 1: you walk towards the front door, which automatically unlocks for you. Uh,
Speaker 1: it might be that it just recognizes who you are
Speaker 1: through some sort of facial recognition, or maybe it's because
Speaker 1: of the way you walk, or maybe even your heart beat,
Speaker 1: depending upon how it's detecting this sort of stuff. It
Speaker 1: could be communicating with electronics that you have on your person,
Speaker 1: and that might be the handshake. Um. Anyway, it unlocks immediately,
Speaker 1: so you don't have any need for keys. You don't
Speaker 1: have to fumble for anything. You just you open the door,
Speaker 1: you close it, it locks behind you. You're good to go. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then you walk in the day, the lights in your
Speaker 1: house adjust for the level of brightness of the time
Speaker 1: of day so that it's not too bright. If it's
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day there's a law of
Speaker 1: natural light, or maybe it's at night and it's a
Speaker 1: little brighter so you can around your area. As you
Speaker 1: walk around, music matching your mood comes on. Maybe it
Speaker 1: even is aware of what your schedule was like, because
Speaker 1: if you happen to have an online schedule, it might say, oh,
Speaker 1: look at that, Look at all the meetings Jonathan had.
Speaker 1: He's probably out of his mind with the stress and anxiety.
Speaker 1: Let's play exactly yakety sex just on a loop and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, let's let's turn all the carpets into treadmills,
Speaker 1: and he never actually gets anywhere. It'll be fun. Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe you're beyond that. Maybe your kitchen has already started
Speaker 1: to give you suggestions on what meals you could create
Speaker 1: based upon the stuff you have at hand, and saying,
Speaker 1: you know you're you're totally like stressing out. Here's a
Speaker 1: comfort food recipe. Or maybe it's um, you know, I
Speaker 1: I see that you posted on Facebook that you want
Speaker 1: to lose weight. Here's a low calorie what recipe? I mean?
Speaker 1: It could get either awesome or creepy invasive, depending upon
Speaker 1: your perspective. Um, sometimes I I go between the two,
Speaker 1: Like that would be kind of creepy. Uh. Maybe your
Speaker 1: entertainment system pops on as soon as you enter the
Speaker 1: living room and goes straight to your favorite show, or
Speaker 1: maybe gives you a selection of things to view, things
Speaker 1: that it knows that you'd be interested in, and gives
Speaker 1: you the option of like, well, I want to see
Speaker 1: the one that's in the middle row on the top.
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff. Uh. The window shades could be
Speaker 1: adjusting themselves for whatever time of day or whatever natural
Speaker 1: light is coming in. For example, I've got a west
Speaker 1: facing wall for my living room. Uh if I were
Speaker 1: coming in to watch movies, then I would want those
Speaker 1: shades to come down to block that light from creating glare.
Speaker 1: It could do all of that sort of stuff automatically.
Speaker 1: The temperature is exactly how you like it. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I mean this is the sort of stuff that you
Speaker 1: can imagine the smart home of the future having, And
Speaker 1: it's really not that far away, I say, ten years,
Speaker 1: But this is stuff that it would take a little finagling,
Speaker 1: but you could do most of it right now. It
Speaker 1: might not be as seamless or work as easily as
Speaker 1: you would hope, but it's right right, and it might not.
Speaker 1: I mean it might take significantly longer, in fact, than
Speaker 1: ten years for this to be a common occurrence. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: because this is stuff where people of a certain income
Speaker 1: level would be able to make that kind of investment.
Speaker 1: I mean, it has become significantly less expensive than it
Speaker 1: was when you had to have a contractor come in
Speaker 1: and install all this. And a lot of the technology
Speaker 1: we're seeing today is designed to essentially plug into the
Speaker 1: stuff we already have, like those Hugh light bulbs just
Speaker 1: screw into regular light sockets. Yeah, you don't have to
Speaker 1: have a special one. All the technology is built into
Speaker 1: the bulb itself. You know. Somehow I imagine that this
Speaker 1: kind of thing would become more common in new homes
Speaker 1: than as us. Yeah. I think it all depends on
Speaker 1: the person as well. Like my home is relatively new,
Speaker 1: but I could see myself making In fact, I have
Speaker 1: I've got internet connected lights in my living room, so
Speaker 1: I can turn the lights on in my house right
Speaker 1: now or turn them off or dim them. I like
Speaker 1: to do that when my wife is at home and
Speaker 1: I'm not and I make her think that it's haunted.
Speaker 1: I almost always get a text immediately afterward saying knock
Speaker 1: it off. She's like, I know it's you, and it
Speaker 1: always is. But yeah, I can see this definitely being
Speaker 1: something that gets built into newer homes. And because because
Speaker 1: even even with the ease of installation, it's still a
Speaker 1: level of investment and both money and in time. Oh yeah, yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: if you look at the way that smart options have
Speaker 1: been integrated into cars. For example, I've got a I've
Speaker 1: got a car from two thousand two, and um, it's
Speaker 1: got a CD player and a tape deck. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I can play m P three players by putting a
Speaker 1: special connecting tape in the tape deck and running a
Speaker 1: line in the game I used to play that. But
Speaker 1: but but you know, um so there are ways of
Speaker 1: getting technology into even even my older car shop. But
Speaker 1: but it's a lot easier if it's just built into
Speaker 1: the right going going and getting an aftermarket you know,
Speaker 1: system is an option, but that is a that's a
Speaker 1: big investment, and it requires that you take your you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be making I would never make that conversion myself.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know the first thing about installing a new
Speaker 1: entertainment system into my vehicle, so you know, I would
Speaker 1: have to have other people do that, and you know that.
Speaker 1: I actually think that a lot of the smart home
Speaker 1: stuff is significantly easier than the car. But but if
Speaker 1: you're talking about everything, who I mean, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of work, right, That's there's not like the one stop
Speaker 1: shop where you just turn your whole home into an
Speaker 1: automated superhouse, right, So so that's actually kind of kind
Speaker 1: of a drawback. Really is is the kind of rate
Speaker 1: of potential adoption for this technology? What are some others? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to explore some of the drawbacks
Speaker 1: because anytime you have a new, a new sort of
Speaker 1: genre of technology coming into our lives. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of kinks to work out. Yeah, and there
Speaker 1: and meddally, there are a ton with smart health technology,
Speaker 1: and it would be irresponsible of us to suggest otherwise.
Speaker 1: There are quite a few things we could talk about.
Speaker 1: One is, uh, it's a frustration for consumers. It's the
Speaker 1: whole locked in ecosystem. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, if
Speaker 1: if you're going to have your music system communicating with
Speaker 1: your television, then do you need to have a music
Speaker 1: system and a television created by the same company, right?
Speaker 1: Or if you have a smart washer and a smart dryer,
Speaker 1: do they have to both be of the same brand? Uh?
Speaker 1: And even maybe even models that were produced very close
Speaker 1: to Yeah, because as technology improves, sometimes it's not as
Speaker 1: backwards compatible as you would like it to be. And uh,
Speaker 1: or if you want your refrigerator and stove to work together.
Speaker 1: And I've seen, like I've seen full systems where there's
Speaker 1: this full integration between multiple appliances. And appliances are big
Speaker 1: ticket items. I mean these are expensive, right, and most
Speaker 1: of us, uh, I think it's fair to say most
Speaker 1: of us in this room, myself included are not necessarily
Speaker 1: the type who are ready to go out and buy
Speaker 1: a pair or more major appliances at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, not not this week anyway. Who knows what
Speaker 1: next week will bring. Yeah, that's another reason we might
Speaker 1: be seeing this more often in new homes, right, major
Speaker 1: like whole room renovation right right, because because that financial
Speaker 1: investment is significant, and if you are locked into an ecosystem,
Speaker 1: that's a problem because most most consumers, I would think,
Speaker 1: I like to have some options, right. They don't want
Speaker 1: to end up saying, well, I love this washer and
Speaker 1: I really like this other dryer, but there's no point
Speaker 1: in getting the two because they can't communicate with each
Speaker 1: other because they're made by different manufacturers and they they
Speaker 1: speak differ print languages. And that's a real problem with
Speaker 1: home connected homes. There are a lot of systems that
Speaker 1: are dependent upon one another and they have to speak
Speaker 1: the common language, and that means you're locked into a
Speaker 1: specific manufacturer, whether you like it or not. Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: And I mean also just for controlling them. Like imagine
Speaker 1: if you've got if every appliance in your home is
Speaker 1: a smart appliance and you have I don't know twenty
Speaker 1: five apps you have to use to manage every single
Speaker 1: one of them, right, Like my lights I was talking about,
Speaker 1: that's a specific app on my phone, right, So if
Speaker 1: I got one from my locks, that would be a
Speaker 1: separate app. And if I got so if I got
Speaker 1: a security system with cameras, that would be another app.
Speaker 1: And if I got you know, etcetera et other. And
Speaker 1: you eventually get to a point where you have, I
Speaker 1: have a page on my smartphone that's just all the
Speaker 1: apps that handle my my house, and that alone is frustrating.
Speaker 1: On top of that, I'd say we can't always count
Speaker 1: on these apps being incredibly user friendly and frustration free,
Speaker 1: Like what if half of those apps are cons instantly,
Speaker 1: Like do you want to install this proprietary toolbar and
Speaker 1: ads for things? Sure? Sure? And I mean and they
Speaker 1: can be I mean, software gets buggy. Apps are frequently
Speaker 1: kind of buggy and need continual updates. And you know,
Speaker 1: some there's definitely some devices or some apps that work
Speaker 1: better on one platform or another. So you might have
Speaker 1: some devices that work better or only work with one
Speaker 1: platform or another. Like if you're an Apple user, you
Speaker 1: might not be able to use that Samsung TV that Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would get like incredibly frustrating. Could you just imagine
Speaker 1: telling people like this house my house, it's amazing if
Speaker 1: I were an Apple user, but because it's pretty much
Speaker 1: a standard, I gotta do everything by hand. Anyway, it's
Speaker 1: a dumb house. It's a stupid house. But the the
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's a great point. It's really possible
Speaker 1: that the appliances, like you you could get hardware that
Speaker 1: you think is amazing, but the apps are terrible, or
Speaker 1: vice versa. You could get an app that has a
Speaker 1: great user interface, it's really well designed, it's smooth, but
Speaker 1: the actual appliance isn't that great. And these are all issues.
Speaker 1: This is why we want to see lots more options
Speaker 1: in our when we're making our choices for these sort
Speaker 1: of things. Oh yeah, that that is definitely. I mean,
Speaker 1: as we have discussed on the show before, the future
Speaker 1: is probably not going to be as perfect and smooth
Speaker 1: as movies usually portray it. Um, you know, even smart
Speaker 1: homes biggest success story so far, Nest had a recall
Speaker 1: in that affected four d and forty thousand units of Protect,
Speaker 1: which is there smoke and carbon monoxide alarm. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: the thing with that by the way, in case you're
Speaker 1: wondering what the recall was about, it didn't like explode
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Just the computer could get confused
Speaker 1: by input from the motion detector while simultaneously detecting smoke
Speaker 1: or carbon monoxide and thus failed to set off the alarm,
Speaker 1: which is I mean, if you've got an alarm as
Speaker 1: designed to you just sort of things, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a pretty big flaw, especially if you're in the room
Speaker 1: and there's a carbon monoxide leak, right, you kind of
Speaker 1: want to know about it. In that case, it's it's
Speaker 1: otherwise undetectable. I mean, this is yeah, that is absolutely
Speaker 1: a fundamental flaw in the technology, right. So so I
Speaker 1: do think that we're going to see a lot of
Speaker 1: glitches like that in these early years, and that that could,
Speaker 1: you know, possibly put a lot of consumers off and
Speaker 1: slow the process of of overall rollout and development. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these kind of things could affect
Speaker 1: multiple types of smart home devices, whether they're for automation
Speaker 1: or for remote access and connectedness. But there are some
Speaker 1: flaws with the idea of the smart home that are
Speaker 1: specifically related to the connectedness, the remote access. The fact
Speaker 1: that you're going to be transmitting data beyond the sort
Speaker 1: of perimeter of the house itself. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring up one super disturbing example that I actually came
Speaker 1: across because Josh and Chuck were talking about it on
Speaker 1: one of their videos not too long ago. Speak not
Speaker 1: their names on this show, Josh and Chuck of stuff
Speaker 1: you should know who speak not their show name on
Speaker 1: the No I love Josh and Chuck. Yes, of course,
Speaker 1: if you're not a fan of stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: you should be. But anyway, what they were talking about
Speaker 1: was in April two thousand and fourteen, and there was
Speaker 1: this story came out. So what I found was there
Speaker 1: was a Cincinnati area of Fox affiliate that that reported
Speaker 1: on this somebody hacked a baby monitor. Oh yeah. Supposedly
Speaker 1: there was a woman in a house in the in
Speaker 1: this area of Ohio and she woke up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night because she heard a man's voice
Speaker 1: in her baby's room. It turned out her baby monitor
Speaker 1: camera was moving without her moving it, and someone was
Speaker 1: yelling at the baby through the intercom, wake up baby,
Speaker 1: that's not cool at all. Nope. And then the father
Speaker 1: entered the room and apparently the camera turned to him,
Speaker 1: and whoever was on the other end yelled some very unpleasant,
Speaker 1: unkind things. It was reported that the camera they used
Speaker 1: was a Fostcam wireless I P camera, and this is
Speaker 1: a camera that, of course you can get remote access
Speaker 1: to because it's designed to be able to be accessed
Speaker 1: through an app. So if one of the parents is, say,
Speaker 1: out at the store or something, and they want to
Speaker 1: they want to check in on the baby through their phone,
Speaker 1: they can do that. On one hand, that seems like
Speaker 1: a really good convenient thing to be able to do.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, if you don't have all the
Speaker 1: proper security measures in place, this can allow this kind
Speaker 1: of behavior. Well. Yeah, if you have any system where
Speaker 1: there's going to be two way communication, then that means
Speaker 1: that while you have the access to get in and
Speaker 1: have have this remote ability to to actually access your
Speaker 1: your home, if security is not well designed or well implemented, uh,
Speaker 1: then so could someone else. I mean, that's the idea
Speaker 1: is that if if you are able to uh to
Speaker 1: make this connection, then other people who are able to
Speaker 1: breach that security can do the same thing. Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 1: So this original article, this Fox nineteen article from Cincinnati area.
Speaker 1: They cited this so called solutions expert I don't know
Speaker 1: quite what that means, named Dave Hatter, and they said
Speaker 1: that he explained that you've got to change the password
Speaker 1: on these things, and you've got to keep the updates relevant,
Speaker 1: but the systems aren't gonna necessarily take care of you
Speaker 1: like this this camera. It apparently required a firmware update
Speaker 1: to patch a known security flaw, but the camera doesn't
Speaker 1: do that automatically. You've got to like go to their
Speaker 1: website and download it. And if you don't do at
Speaker 1: then you have this major security vulner But that's a
Speaker 1: flaw that I think could have easily been solved by
Speaker 1: a push notification. But I mean sure, but I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe they weren't. I don't know, um. And
Speaker 1: also I mean I don't know about their WiFi status,
Speaker 1: like whether they had a good password on their yeah,
Speaker 1: because because like WiFi routers, you know, they almost come
Speaker 1: always come with the log in as admin and the
Speaker 1: passwords password, and a lot of people don't change that,
Speaker 1: which is we'll talk more about that in a second. Well,
Speaker 1: it actually gets worse because there was a Newsweek article
Speaker 1: from November that pointed out how a Russian website was
Speaker 1: recently displaying video from people's in home internet connected devices,
Speaker 1: including CCTV, webcams and baby monitors, and this included more
Speaker 1: than four thousand homes and businesses in the United States,
Speaker 1: two thousand in France, and five in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 1: And again this was chalked up to unprotected devices like
Speaker 1: this is why, this is why Matt Frederick of Stuff
Speaker 1: they Don't Want you to Know has has tape over
Speaker 1: all of his webcams. This is also why you had
Speaker 1: so many people up in arms when Microsoft said the
Speaker 1: Xbox One originally was going to ship with the Connect
Speaker 1: and that was that like you had to have a
Speaker 1: connect and that only that, but the Xbox One itself
Speaker 1: would always be on. And those combinations where you haven't
Speaker 1: always on device that also has a camera pointed into
Speaker 1: your space. Yeah whatever, Yeah, yeah, that's that's that. A
Speaker 1: lot of people balkedd that reasonably. I would say, well,
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of commentaries on the Internet who
Speaker 1: I don't know, seemed to me to be unsympathetic to
Speaker 1: the people being spied on here because they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's stupid, you should know to change your password and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and I'm like, but let's not victim
Speaker 1: blame here, right, I mean, yeah, it's good to know
Speaker 1: to change your password, but a lot of people are
Speaker 1: not especially tech savvy. They don't deserve to be spied
Speaker 1: on because they're you know, they don't know a whole
Speaker 1: lot about how to best protect technology. I think that's
Speaker 1: something that the people who do know what they're doing,
Speaker 1: like the manufacturers of these devices, should really put steps
Speaker 1: in place to to you know, make sure that proper
Speaker 1: security is being enforce So, in other words, you develop
Speaker 1: a product so that when you first set it up,
Speaker 1: it prompts you to change the password and won't let
Speaker 1: you continue until you've done so. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's fair to say, well, what a total
Speaker 1: nano rod won't change their password, you know, you find
Speaker 1: that their baby gets fed on. That's silly to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, it's there. There are two sides of this.
Speaker 1: Jumping ahead a little bit, but that's okay. There's two
Speaker 1: sides of this. One is that I think there definitely
Speaker 1: needs to be consumer education where people are aware of
Speaker 1: the possible UH security breaches that could exist if they
Speaker 1: don't practice good security. I think that is necessary because
Speaker 1: even if you have this essentially you know policy that
Speaker 1: that's some companies adopt to UH, to prompt people to
Speaker 1: change their passwords. I don't know that you can mandate that,
Speaker 1: and even if you did, technically you should be changing
Speaker 1: it fairly frequently anyway, or at least regularly. So has
Speaker 1: a lot of work on the back end. And honestly,
Speaker 1: the companies that make the stuff have a lot more
Speaker 1: pull than we consumers do. So UH, I think you
Speaker 1: have to take a two pronged approach. You have to
Speaker 1: put the pressure on companies to say, let's let's try
Speaker 1: and give people set them up for success. Let's let's
Speaker 1: make sure we design things that that encourage good security,
Speaker 1: and maybe that encouragement includes requiring it. And then on
Speaker 1: the other side, teach people, the consumers, why this is
Speaker 1: an important thing, so that you don't become a victim. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. But one thing that I think is worth
Speaker 1: pointing out is that all these devices we were just
Speaker 1: talking about are sort of like video streaming or media
Speaker 1: streaming devices. But that's not the only way that a
Speaker 1: connect did a remote access device could compromise your privacy.
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't have to be videos. Just pure
Speaker 1: data could compromise your privacy in interesting ways you wouldn't expect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a little example when we chatted about this
Speaker 1: earlier about imagine that you have one of these Internet
Speaker 1: connected thermostats and someone is able to access it and
Speaker 1: just see how you are heating or cooling your home
Speaker 1: throughout the year. That could be information that's used to
Speaker 1: shame you, especially if you heard like a politician running
Speaker 1: on an eco friendly campaign, that would be you know,
Speaker 1: we we saw similar things when there was a information
Speaker 1: about al Gore's uh energy use in his home, like
Speaker 1: that was being used to try and shame him as
Speaker 1: he was doing his Inconvenient Truth tours. So this is
Speaker 1: stuff that actually happens. I mean, it's that is uh,
Speaker 1: maybe a fairly benign example, because I don't know that
Speaker 1: many of us are going to be running on campaigns
Speaker 1: where we're really dependent upon putting forth an image of
Speaker 1: being eco friendly while secretly we're like bern all the
Speaker 1: coal I don't know that that's going to be that common.
Speaker 1: But there are other examples as well. Just anything that
Speaker 1: is going to be monitoring you in any way, whether
Speaker 1: it's just to say when you're home and when you're not.
Speaker 1: Obviously that could be useful information for someone. If someone's
Speaker 1: you know, electronically casing your home and says, uh, because
Speaker 1: I'm able to look at these systems, I can see
Speaker 1: that this person is regularly not at home at these
Speaker 1: times of day. That kind of stuff could be dangerous.
Speaker 1: There are other issues as well. Uh. We talked about
Speaker 1: internet connected locks. Obviously, you want really good security on
Speaker 1: anything that's going to be a lock in your home.
Speaker 1: You don't want people to have remote access to it.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there was a a black Hat USA
Speaker 1: conference where some hackers demonstrated that they were able, or
Speaker 1: at least they published the papers say they were able
Speaker 1: to uh access a z wave based internet connected lock
Speaker 1: and unlock it. They were able to hack into it.
Speaker 1: They didn't have the access to it authorized access, they
Speaker 1: got unauthorized access and were able to operate it. That
Speaker 1: being said, in that particular case, it was because the
Speaker 1: manufacturer had created a product that had a bug in it,
Speaker 1: a flaw on the programming that did not incorporate the
Speaker 1: security protocol properly, and in fact we're able to address
Speaker 1: that with a patch, and once the patch was made,
Speaker 1: the hackers could no longer access that lock. So it's
Speaker 1: not that there was a fundamental flaw in the technology,
Speaker 1: it was that the technology even poorly implemented. Well, you
Speaker 1: need to make sure sometimes there's just not an easy
Speaker 1: way to do this, but you need to make sure
Speaker 1: that the that it was properly implemented. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that is absolutely the responsibility of the product designers software
Speaker 1: team exactly. Yeah. So it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a big there's a point where you
Speaker 1: put your trust in some other company. Now, some security
Speaker 1: experts have pointed out that in order to hack into
Speaker 1: an internet connected lock, for example, like to be able
Speaker 1: to get access to a house, we require so much
Speaker 1: effort that they're just easier physical ways of doing the
Speaker 1: same thing, like drilling out a lock. I mean, I
Speaker 1: I think that there's I think that there's probably a
Speaker 1: lot easier ways to to break into a home, and
Speaker 1: I really hope that we're not heading towards the future
Speaker 1: where people have incredibly intricate digital locks and large plate
Speaker 1: glass windows, right exactly. Yeah, you can end up literally
Speaker 1: hacking with an AX and and that was something that
Speaker 1: the security expert said, It's like, well, we start to
Speaker 1: obsess over the vulnerabilities and technology that we're depending upon,
Speaker 1: and we're ignoring the fact that very that that generally speaking,
Speaker 1: it's a very small population that that's capable of exploiting
Speaker 1: those vulnerabilities. But there's a larger population of people who
Speaker 1: those vulnerabilities that doesn't even enter their head. That's not
Speaker 1: an issue. I could kick your door in, you know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't hack your smart lock. Yeah. So so, I
Speaker 1: mean that's one of those things is that while we
Speaker 1: are bringing up some of these negatives, in some cases
Speaker 1: it's kind of a moot point. Really it's not that
Speaker 1: big a deal. But there are other things too. I mean,
Speaker 1: I could imagine a hacker getting access to uh internet
Speaker 1: connected thermostat and then cranking up the heat when you're gone.
Speaker 1: I mean that could actually be a very dangerous thing.
Speaker 1: Let's say you've got pets and they crank the heat
Speaker 1: way up on a hot day. It's not good. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, even if they're just trying to
Speaker 1: like prank you by like raising your heating your electricity boilers,
Speaker 1: that yeah, it could be bad for your fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's lots of stuff that could be really seriously a
Speaker 1: problem delicate they are, okay, yeah, I believe you. I
Speaker 1: don't have any fish meet me neither. I just their delicate.
Speaker 1: I used to, but then I set my heat too
Speaker 1: high and burnt fish. No, they really really to require
Speaker 1: constant care. This is why I don't own fish. I
Speaker 1: would kill all them here. So, yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of there. There are things to be concerned about with
Speaker 1: this kind of technology, but uh, that doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: need to be afraid of it. We just need to
Speaker 1: be vigilant. We need to make sure that the implementation
Speaker 1: is proper. We need to make sure we're taking the
Speaker 1: best steps that we can as consumers. We need to
Speaker 1: continue to pay attention to what companies are doing as manufacturers,
Speaker 1: and as long as we're all doing our part, we
Speaker 1: can make sure we get to that amazing future where
Speaker 1: our smart homes are anticipating our every need and everything's
Speaker 1: awesome and and relaxing, and it frees us up to
Speaker 1: watch so much of The Bachelor. Yeah yeah, yeah, maybe,
Speaker 1: I mean I gotta give supernatural break Sometimes Sam and
Speaker 1: Dean need to go on their own for a while,
Speaker 1: and then I need to just look at a rose
Speaker 1: for a for a bit. That's all. I've got needs.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: all about after the podcast. Any rate, Uh, this was
Speaker 1: an interesting topic to really kind of dive into and explore,
Speaker 1: like the positives and the negatives and and it's something
Speaker 1: that we plan on doing a lot of in the future.
Speaker 1: And you know other other technologies that are kind of
Speaker 1: emerging tech and sort of take a critical look at
Speaker 1: them and say, where are the areas where we need
Speaker 1: further development to make sure it's a technology that is
Speaker 1: going to be good for us, not something that's like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's all adopt this and then realize that was a mistake, right,
Speaker 1: like those three D televisions everyone got a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. Whoops. All right, Well, that wraps up this episode.
Speaker 1: If you guys have suggestions for future episodes, you always
Speaker 1: wanted to know how something in the future was going
Speaker 1: to work, you should let us know. Send us a message.
Speaker 1: Our email address is FW thinking at how Stuff Works
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