Are smart homes making us stupid?

I was recently at an event called Hacker Connect Inman where a prevalent topic of discussion was smart technology and the privacy implications that come with products like Amazon’s Echo being able to listen to the conversations we have inside our homes. There was even mention of a murder trial where one side was trying to subpoena Alexa because she overheard a key conversation and could reasonably have incriminating data stored in her database.

This experience got me thinking. I’m a technology junkie and I love innovation. Whenever I look at my phone I’m reminded of all the things it controls in my home and the things I want it to control. You can control pretty much everything these days. You can even have your smart fridge manage your diet by monitoring when you open the door.

“Homes are getting smarter, but at what cost?”

With that it mind, I came across this article in The Huffington Post that argues that smart homes really are making us stupid.

What do I think? In my opinion, innovation is amazing, but only if we use it to solve a problem that we really needed to solve. If it’s used to make a cool thing to solve something that didn’t need to be solved, then that’s not really innovation.

I highly recommend you read this article. Do you agree with the author? Are smart homes really making us stupid? I invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

As always, if you have any questions or are thinking about buying or selling a home, please feel free to reach out to me. I’d love to speak with you!