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I cannot stand to be proved wrong. Especially by my husband. The audacity. But as I sit in the inescapable blinding sunlight that holds my living room captive for several hours every afternoon, I have to take accountability for my actions. This could have been prevented had I not been so seduced by modern living.
It all began one fateful afternoon when the exciting topic of blinds came up. We needed new ones and I decided it was time to upgrade from the laborious task of manual operation to electronic ones, despite my husband’s protests. I perceived his objections as an irrational and conquerable aversion towards 21st-century living; I couldn’t possibly have known there was logic in there somewhere.
I was so enamoured with them when they arrived that I barely paid attention to the technician installing them when he instructed us on how to care and charge them. How hard could it be? And when the time came, I ignored the flashing battery symbol as easily as one does the oil change sign on a car’s dashboard. Those are problems for our future selves that never come.
But that day did come and it came in bright. Spring had reared its sunny head so I reached for the remote, only to find it dead. No problem, I thought, and ordered a pack of the annoyingly hard-to-find-in-person batteries. I could last a day or two without functioning blinds. I’ll make a game of wearing sunglasses indoors with the kids that they’ll love and I’ll find exhausting and immediately regret introducing. Perfect.
When I replaced the batteries and found the blinds still unresponsive, extracts of the technician’s instructions echoed in my head — “you’ll need blah blah wire” — “you see here in this blah blah” — “blah blah step ladder”. Oh no. Damn you, sleek, distracting blinds! How do I work you?!
Days passed, then weeks. Our living room became a veritable no man’s land in the afternoons. I still tried to convince myself that these shades were better than manual, but that delusion faded as our main living space became a stage for my shame.
My blinds are not “smart” — and clearly neither am I — but they gave me a glimpse of a home life utterly dependent on technology. Yes, home automation offers a life of convenience but it also removes proactive control. It also makes us lazier. And when it comes to security, could it even do the opposite? Our homes may be smarter but are we getting dumber?
There’s a fine line between efficient and lazy, and we have been gleefully bounding over it. While I can get behind smart locks and security cameras that send alerts to your phone, I’m less keen on automated thermostats, sound systems that learn your preferences and motion-activated lights. When it all goes wrong, will we be left in baking hot rooms, stuck on a doom loop of a song, flailing our arms around to get the lights on? And if the Pentagon can get hacked, what hope is there for our little home security systems?
Research from NYU Tandon School of Engineering reveals “alarming privacy and security threats in Smart Homes”. David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University, notes that “when we think of what happens between the walls of our homes, we think of it as a trusted, private place. In reality, we find that smart devices in our homes are piercing that veil of trust and privacy — in ways that allow nearly any company to learn what devices are in your home, to know when you are home, and learn where your home is”.
I’m already convinced that my endlessly mundane existence is being observed and tracked by government and criminal departments alike. When I heard that Amazon’s Alexa was always listening I was flabbergasted that this was only news for a day, and then everyone just accepted it as the norm. I don’t even want to begin to think about what would happen if the conversations I have aloud with myself in the privacy of my home were recorded. Prison time? Mandatory anger management? Mensa invitation? Who knows.
I put stickers on my laptop’s camera when I’m not using it for fear of being watched by devoted hackers as I pick food out of my teeth and doom scroll, and I take the world of Black Mirror as gospel, so a whole home in danger of being hacked would push me over the edge.
But it’s not just security. What about when convenience becomes inconvenient? I recently stayed in a house that seemed to be primarily controlled by Alexa, which had all the kids, mine included, barking orders at all hours at an inanimate object: what’s worse — turning off the lights manually or tyrant children shouting more? And sure, it’s convenient to not have to turn off every light and yes it would be nice to just keep looking at your phone when the doorbell rings instead of getting up, but what’s also nice? Moving.
Do I really want a home that is smarter than me? After being humbled by mere electronic blinds the idea of a home that regulates itself to my needs is terrifying. Isn’t this how the robot wars start? With a first wave of sentient vacuum-cleaning Roombas?
It’s as if we’re living like the Jetsons as we wait for robot housekeeper Rosie to finally realise her superiority and use our algorithms against us. No wonder there’s a movement of automated home refuseniks.
I’ll let my husband win this battle. Just as the Amish tend to return to their old-fashioned lives after their Rumspringa dalliance with modern life, so shall I back to mine.
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