[acorkery]

I think these are great examples of technological aids that people really do not want in their lives. Our brains evolved long ago to a point where we can do many simple things concurrently, and there is a power/meaning in interacting directly with your environment - not through some smart aid that tells you that your plant is dying.

[mcherm]

That same reasoning would probably tell you that no one would want a "box in your home that you can talk to", yet Alexa and its competitors are doing quite well.

[monk_e_boy]

When you share your life with other people who knows when the plants were last watered, was it me 2 weeks ago or my wife yesterday? Watering plants is a silly example, meds, health, pupils in a school, patients in a hospital. All much more interesting to have meta data on.

[acorkery]

Yeah, sorry the plant issue is a bit of a silly point. I just meant that you can tell by looking at the plant, feeling the soil that it needs watering or not. So many of the use cases I see for smart home devices seem contrived. "What can we do with this amazing technology?".

I agree voice-controlled devices are a great innovation - particularly for accessibility. But as a mass-market appeal, I've met a lot of people that love their smartphones, new technologies, but aren't sold on home automation. The big enduring technology successes in recent decades captured people's imaginations instantly. They didn't need much convincing beyond the initial idea.

A separate objection is that by not using your brain for daily routines, memory and organisational skills will suffer. Purely speculative, but I think people downplay the importance of menial tasks in giving people a daily rhythm and discipline. The argument I sometimes see is that it frees you up to do higher-order tasks. I think it's unlikely.

[TeMPOraL]

> Yeah, sorry the plant issue is a bit of a silly point. I just meant that you can tell by looking at the plant, feeling the soil that it needs watering or not.

A recent dicussion on HN about that guy who crowdsourced watering of his plant generally suggests that a) no, for many, many plants it's not that easy (especially those not in their natural climate), and b) people do routinely screw this up.

I for one vote the metadata-on-plants up; that would provide me more value than 99% of things the startup economy is producing... combined.

> So many of the use cases I see for smart home devices seem contrived. "What can we do with this amazing technology?".

I agree. But I feel this is because we mostly see the marketed ideas, which are optimized for selling products, without any regard for whether they're useful or not.

Some things I'd love technology would help me with, which are hard engineering problems, include:

- tracking expiration dates of foodstuffs without requiring me to do additional manual work, and displaying them without requiring me to click much (or preferably anything)

- tracking items around the house, so that I can find any misplaced thing by a simple query

> A separate objection is that by not using your brain for daily routines, memory and organisational skills will suffer. Purely speculative, but I think people downplay the importance of menial tasks in giving people a daily rhythm and discipline. The argument I sometimes see is that it frees you up to do higher-order tasks. I think it's unlikely.

I don't know. Myself, I can't stick to pretty much any daily routine, so that part of my brain is already broken (and always has been), and I appreciate any crutch technology can provide (the best, still, is living with a person whose "routine" part of brain is working and that will remind me about menial things to be done).

And - maybe that's because of my broken routine-brain - I find "daily rhythm" to be a soul-destroying concept. If you want to put your life on autopilot, instead of outsourcing repetitive tasks somewhere, why live at all?

[acorkery]

Good points there. The autopilot thing - I don't see it like that at all. You can be doing a repetitive task and thinking at the same time. It can help you focus and relax. Also when you finish the menial task, you get a little smug satisfaction. "I've earned that beer". Autopilot for me is sitting on the couch asking your electronic friend if the fridge has cleaned itself yet.

Many favorite hobbies are repetitive and in theory could be outsourced. Some people enjoy knitting, raking the yard, organizing their record collection, finding Waldo etc..

Hey, it's all down to personal preference and where you get your kicks. I won't labour the point as I've gone on too much. Just putting forward another perspective.

[TeMPOraL]

Fair enough :). I do find myself oddly relaxed when doing some of the menial stuff, especially when that stuff can't be easily automated away (if it can be, then tend to think about how to automate it instead).

I suppose I blended two distinct topics too much in my response. The whole dislike for going on autopilot through life came from various attempts at enforcing a structure on my day. At some point I always start to feel a strong discomfort for such routines. These days, when I plan days out, I treat those plans as kind of sane defaults, things to do if I don't have anything more important, and not as absolute commitments.