Just How Smart Do You Want Your House to Be?

The concept of the "smart home" has been around for a long time. Remember the old Jetsons cartoons we watched in the 60s? Microsoft's smart home, built inside a building on the Redmond campus, was featured in Reader's Digest a few years ago:
Home Smart Home -- Explore Technology's Dream House: Making High-Tech Work for You | Your America | Reader's Digest

More recently, Hewlett-Packard constructed its own version of the smart home in Cupertino, California near the company's headquarters. The television's set top box serves as the home's main user interface:
New devices aim to claim set-top box market - MarketWatch
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Meanwhile, many less well known companies are hard at work designing technology to control our homes (and, in many ways, our lives). Lagotek, a company based right down the road from Microsoft in Bellevue, Washington, markets a product called the Home Intelligence Platform (HIP) that integrates control of your audio/video equipment, security system, thermostats, lighting, sprinkler system and more - and you can do it through software running on your cell phone.
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Lagotek. Smarter homes -- better living.

We discussed one aspect of the smart home phenomenon - smart appliances that connect to the Internet - a few months back in our sister publication, WXPnews. The consensus then was that most readers are wary of refrigerators that are capable of monitoring our eating habits and perhaps reporting our unhealthy fascination with butter pecan ice cream to some government agency. But there is much more to the subject than that, and it's not just our kitchen implements that could pose a threat to our privacy in the home of the future.

Back in 2005, a Japanese company came out with the Toto Intelligence Toilet, which for a mere $3500 could analyze the sugar level in your urine. Who knows whether it was the price or the privacy issues that were to blame, but for some reason it didn't seem to catch on, at least not in the U.S. A toilet that can analyze sugar levels could almost certainly be programmed to perform other analyses, such as detection of drugs. I'm surprised that employers haven't installed them in company bathrooms, as a stealthier way of doing random drug tests. Of course, you would need a way to match up the sample with the, umm, donor. I guess time stamping and hidden video cameras would do the trick.

But back at home, I think most of us like to believe that our homes are still our castles. We like gadgets that make life more convenient, but we adamantly don't like the idea of those gadgets being used to spy on us, or even just telling us what to do.

"Smart" just for the sake of being smart doesn't seem to sell too well in the home tech arena. For years there have been refrigerators available with TVs or even computer monitors built into the doors, but most consumers aren't buying the idea. Sure, it has the "cool" factor, but it's not really very useful. If you want to watch TV while you're cooking, you can get a much larger LCD TV or a lot less than those fancy fridges, and you can place it in a much more convenient place for watching than on the refrigerator door.

A fancy TV that seems slightly more useful is the one that's integrated with a mirror, designed to place over the sink in the bathroom. Turned off, it looks like any mirror. Turn it on and you can watch the morning news while you brush your teeth. At a price of around $3000, it's a luxury I can't personally justify, but I think I would get a lot more enjoyment out of it than a cable-ready refrigerator.
Mirror TV, Mirror Television from Wheelhouse Marketing


Today's world is very security-conscious, both when it comes to computers and in the "real world." Many of us have alarm systems to protect our homes, and those are getting more sophisticated all the time. Not only can they detect open doors or windows, they can also be tied in with the smoke detectors and call the fire department if there's a fire. Other components include water detectors that can notify you and/or emergency services if flooding occurs. Surveillance cameras are increasingly popular and they come with their own web servers and IP addresses so you can access the camera over the Internet either from right there in the house or from miles away when you're at work or on vacation.

All of these "smart" components sound like great things to have - as long as they stay under the control of the owner. But what happens when your house gets smart enough to outsmart you? In some areas, local police and sheriff's departments are encouraging business owners and residences to provide them with the password to their surveillance systems. The idea is that if an alarm goes off, law enforcement personnel can access your cameras and see what's happening in order to identify suspects immediately, before police are able to arrive on the scene.

But what's to limit the law enforcement agency to accessing the cameras only when there's an alarm? How do we know they won't do a bit of proactive policing and monitor your home periodically whether there's a reason to do so or not? For outside cameras, that might not be a big deal, but what if the people entrusting their passwords to police have cameras inside their homes or businesses? Then it gets a little trickier. What do you, as a law enforcement officer, do if you're randomly "patrolling" through the webcams and see a homeowner engaging in some illegal activity? If the homeowner is murdering his wife or abusing his child, the answer is a no-brainer. But what if it looks like he's smoking marijuana or copying a copy-protected CD? Do you use technology against him that he installed so you could protect him?

As the homeowner, you could say the solution is simple: just don't give the police your passwords. But there has been talk in the past about the possibility of "back doors" being built into the surveillance cameras. In other words, they would come with a master password that would be available to law enforcement to use "in case of emergency." There's no evidence that this is being done - but it's a good bet that manufacturers wouldn't publicize it if it were. Remember when car makers started putting black boxes in our vehicles to record information, without telling consumers about it?

A big focus of smart home technology is the aging baby boomer generation. The idea is that with enough gadgets to do things for you and monitor your health and movements to ensure that you're okay, you will be able remain more independent (of other people, at least) when you get older. ADT, one of the country's largest home security companies, has a system called QuietCare that monitors the daily activities of senior citizens with strategically place motion detectors, and alerts relatives or emergency services in case of a break in the daily routine that might indicate problems.
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QuietCare, from Living Independently

And technology can do more than just be on the lookout for accidents or health incidents. Some major universities have joined forces to develop robotic assistants for elderly or chronically ill persons that can take the place of a human nurse. Aptly named Nursebot, it will follow you around and remind you to take your medicine or that it's time for your doctor's appointment. It will also help arthritic patients with tasks made difficult by their conditions, such as doing laundry or cooking.
CMU/Pitt Nursebot Project

The goals of these technological innovations are laudable. I know that, given the choice, I would much prefer living in my own house with a robot and motion monitors to living in a nursing home or other institutional facility. But will the idea of an outside agency keeping track of what we do in our own homes "trickle down" from those cases where it might be necessary to society in general? Are we gathering more and more momentum as we head toward a 1984-like world?

The home automation industry stands ready and eager to make your house smarter - for a price. But the real question is: just how smart do we want our houses to be? It's not an easy question to answer, because the technology offers many very real benefits. It also carries with it at least a modicum of danger.

Tell us what you think. Should there be a limit on how smart our homes can become? If price were no object, where would you draw the line on "smartening up" your house? Would you trust the government (in the form of local law enforcement) with the passwords to your indoor webcams? Should "back door" access be built into such cameras so police can more efficiently respond in case of an emergency? Do robotics and monitoring systems targeted at older people serve a vital purpose - or are they likely to just further isolate the elderly from human contact and thus make them more unhappy? Let us know your opinions