[Cyphase]

Imagine you didn't have to worry about security, privacy, or out-of-date hardware and software. Would you still not see any benefit to having your fridge (or coffee pot, or oven, or ...) connected to the network? You might not; but if you do, then that obviously says there are beneficial reasons to have those things be connected.

I think a lot of people who say "What's even the point?" in this context don't really mean that in the end, they just don't think it's worth it given the current security / privacy / obsolescence issues involved with IoT devices. And of course those are all real issues that can absolutely weigh against any benefits. But just imagine if smartphones and tablets today were in the same poor state the IoT ecosystem is currently in. There would be a non-trivial amount (more) people wondering if they were worth the trouble.

tl;dr: Potential benefits of IoT, while they certainly have to be weighed against the potential issues that currently exist, are still potential benefits.

[flukus]

> Imagine you didn't have to worry about security, privacy, or out-of-date hardware and software. Would you still not see any benefit to having your fridge (or coffee pot, or oven, or ...) connected to the network?

No I don't. Well I kind of do, but the cool features you'd want it for are the things everyone stops using after a day or two.

The reason the get included is to drive sales, manufacturers need a way to differentiate themselves in a saturated market, they know hardly anyone uses the features and that even if they do then they get the bonus of planned obsolescence.

[Cyphase]

> No I don't.

And as I said, you might not, which is a totally valid opinion; and I agree with your last sentence. My point was just that the costs of IoT don't erase the benefits, even if you believe that they outweigh them.

As an aside, just off the top of my head, and not to say that you necessarily said anything to the contrary: ignoring potential costs, do you (or anyone else who wants to respond) see the benefits of a fridge that can tell you (or, if you want, the grocery store, or the delivery company) what you're running low on, or a coffee pot that automatically turns on when you're about to wake up or get home, even if that's not at a certain time every day, or a dishwasher/etc that can wait for off-peak prices before running, or a sprinkler system that won't water your lawn when there's rain expected later in the day, or a security system that let's you monitor your home and be alerted if there's anything unusual going on (e.g. movement when no one should be home), or an armed defense drone that can monitor the Internet for signs of an incoming zombie horde?

[flukus]

Let me start with the caveat that I'm in my early-mid 30's and progressing ahead of time into the cranky old man stage stage of life. In general though I find this style of automation has too many exceptions and the negatives of those exceptions generally outweighs the benefits.

To take the coffee pot as an example. I'll hit the snooze button between zero and 10 times a morning, so automating the coffee machine would often result in cold coffee. Other times, if I've get a bit to drunk the night before, I'll skip the coffee, so the automation would be a waste. There's also some introduced mental overhead of having 2 workflows for the same thing, if I want a coffee, I go make a coffee, but now I'd have to think about if this was one of the automatic ones or if it requires manual intervention.

I may be atypical in this, but I have largely automated the process myself. I wake up and while I'm still on autopilot fill and turn on the jug (we don't do coffee pots here) go pee, come back and put the instant coffee in and the jug is boiled by then. There simply isn't room to optimize much further than that. I'm also a bit of a stickler for fresh water (incident with a cockaroach ~25 years ago), so I don't like the idea of filling the water the night before. If I wanted too though, I could automate turning the jug on in the morning with an electrical timer 30 years ago.

I think I could come up with a similar list of issues for all/most of your other examples considering most of them are more complicated, particularly the fridge one.

My zombie horde action plan is considerably lower tech ;)

[catdog]

> Imagine you didn't have to worry about security, privacy, or out-of-date hardware and software.

But you have to worry about this and weight cost and benefit, it's just not worth the hassle most of the time,

> But just imagine if smartphones and tablets today were in the same poor state the IoT ecosystem is currently in. There would be a non-trivial amount (more) people wondering if they were worth the trouble.

I don't need to imagine, security, privacy, or out-of-date hardware and software is a huge problem there, too.

[Cyphase]

> But you have to worry about this and weight cost and benefit, it's just not worth the hassle most of the time,

Perhaps you missed that I said, "And of course those are all real issues that can absolutely weigh against any benefits." The point still stands: "tl;dr: Potential benefits of IoT, while they certainly have to be weighed against the potential issues that currently exist, are still potential benefits."

> I don't need to imagine, security, privacy, or out-of-date hardware and software is a huge problem there, too.

Sure, that certainly crossed my mind, but it's just not as bad at a technical level as IoT is right now, though as far as final impact that has to be weighted by market penetration.

I probably could have come up with a better example, but I was dead tired when I wrote that. :)