Smart home spats: The in-jokes, chats and squabbles you’re having in 2018
THE AMBIENT, JAN 2018
When you’re in the market for a new smart home device, whether that’s a colour-changing light bulb or an always-on voice assistant, you’d be forgiven for focusing on what it does first, how it’ll look in your home second and then paying absolutely no attention to how that shiny new piece of tech is going to fit in with the rest of your family.
Wait, what? Yes, it may sound strange, but think about it. Smart home tech is, well, smarter than ever before. It can talk to us, reply to us, get to know us, respond to our every whim and sit there with us when we’re watching Netflix and having a meal.
That means in the same way a new baby or pet might cause mixed feelings, a big upheaval and some arguments, so might a new connected device – just likely to a lesser degree. This seems especially to be the case when one person in the household is sweet on the smart home and others need to be convinced.
To better understand how smart home tech fits in with our families, rubs us the wrong way in relationships and gets confused by our kids, we asked people to share their smart home tech tales.