We love our smart phones. We love it even more that our smart phone knows how to talk to our camera. But we think there's definitely a point where our household appliances can cross the line from being "smart" to going all HAL 9000 on us—or at least it seems that way.
A friend passed along a funny link this morning. Freelance writer Lucy Luginbill wrote a piece for the Tri-City Herald, the local news outlet in the Tri Cities, Washington area, called "Outsmarting my new dishwasher."
Her "confrontation with this exceptionally engineered appliance" ended in a two-(wo)man battle of man vs. the machine. One one side, a mother and daughter furiously trying to the decipher an appliance operation manual, and on the other, a stubbornly smart dishwasher. They vowed not to give up.
After we read the story, it occurred to us that our "smart" devices are really only as smart as the humans who operate them.
If you can't (or won't) be willing to get to know all of the exceptional features of your devices like Lucy and her daughter, there's no use in keeping up with the latest tech.
Are high-tech appliances and home automation a good thing? Yes, but only if you're going to use them. Much like an amateur photographer, we think people should choose appliances that suit their skill level. There's no shame in a dumb dishwasher.
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After we read the story, it occurred to us that our "smart" devices are really only as smart as the humans who operate them.
Exactly. I'd lay the blame for not being able to use a dishwasher squarely on the shoulders of the woman that wasn't smart enough to read a dishwasher manual, and not the engineers.
Hidden buttons, no big deal. Press the button, close the machine, wait for it to finish. I make a strong bet that when the machine stopped to do a rinse cycle that she got antsy not knowing what was going on and opened it.
Also, I'm from the Tri-cities! It's a cool place and fun to see an article from there show up here.
Sometimes something that is "smart" is also very poorly designed.
And @halltp have you ever read a piece of prose by an engineer? Some of the "smartest" people I know are quite frankly the worst communicators.
@MaryWynn, come on, she complained she couldn't find the freaking buttons. Obviously she's dense or just playing it up so she can fill some space on the page. I think it's probably a little bit of both.
"It looks to me,” I sighed as I turned the handbook pages, “that I have to program it internally.”
Heaven forbid.
I usually see how much I can figure out a device before I need the manual, I usually read the cautions and that's it.
Alternate title: Sometimes people are too dumb to use "smart" technology.
I think there is such a thing as too high tech, but I don't think it's necessarily about tech becoming sentient. Nor is it necessarily about it being something that some people can't figure out. I think too high tech is when useless features start getting added. Not features that some people might not use. More like features that no one would use and do not increase the usefulness of the product. That is when it gets too high tech.
Couldn't resist responding to the comments about my blog. Light Notes is....well, "lite" and it's fun to take commonplace situations and make fun of them. In this case, self-deprecating humor illustrated how we often get something new and then either don't use all the whistles and bells or struggle with it until we get it mastered. The EASY instructions had been misplaced so it took a bit more maneuvering to figure out why the dishwasher stopped midway. It needed to have Jet Dry or else it wouldn't complete the cycle. Visit the Light Notes blog at www.tricityherald.com for a little "light" in your day.... :)