I would like three criteria for my home. In order of difficulty.
1. A magic mirror portal for IoT. The If This Then That website gives some concept of how that would work.
Magic mirrors are easy to create now and open source ones using natural language recognition have landed on HN before.
2. The entire network is isolated. Updates take place by the user plugging a wire into the magic mirror but there is no route for information to be transmitted from the magic mirror to an external network. You can't fuck that up.
Some convenience is lost but there isn't a great deal of loss since software agents can communicate to the user or other people as go-between.
3. The magic mirror will possess a spirit or demon, like all magic mirrors in the stories. In this case it's your household assistant, a software agent. I think this is the important and difficult part. It works for you and only you. Appointment scheduling, advice. It operates in the people world by having the ability to make telephone calls and talking to people on your behalf.
Cameras in cabinets can infer a lot about your activities in the same way the supermarkets have a bead on their customer behaviour. A clever assistant might examine inputs (food) and outputs (sensor in a toilet) and then ruminate on health and lifestyle issues. It might even have the courage to tell you to knock off the sugar before you become diabetic. It ought to be possible to understand mood, when the owner is forgetful or stressed and as it is isolated from third parties it should be able to rely on a record of common area conversations.
It's going to be much harder to disentangle multiple people cohabiting. The incentives are against a prohibition on uploading but without a firm stance in a world of shit security the owner's device becomes a telescreen. Remember the exercise trainer in 1984?
> For me personally, allowing thermostat to adjust room temperature based on my body temperature and air quality would be beneficial.
We could use a laser to take many temperature readings of the entire body (just before entering the shower). Variability in body temperature can be used to diagnosis disease, possibly other characteristics. The Qualified Self movement probably offers many other ideas here.
People can justify buying into the concept because it offers legitimate and measurable lifestyle improvements.
But the ideal holds a lot of potential.
I would like three criteria for my home. In order of difficulty.
1. A magic mirror portal for IoT. The If This Then That website gives some concept of how that would work.
Magic mirrors are easy to create now and open source ones using natural language recognition have landed on HN before.
2. The entire network is isolated. Updates take place by the user plugging a wire into the magic mirror but there is no route for information to be transmitted from the magic mirror to an external network. You can't fuck that up.
Some convenience is lost but there isn't a great deal of loss since software agents can communicate to the user or other people as go-between.
3. The magic mirror will possess a spirit or demon, like all magic mirrors in the stories. In this case it's your household assistant, a software agent. I think this is the important and difficult part. It works for you and only you. Appointment scheduling, advice. It operates in the people world by having the ability to make telephone calls and talking to people on your behalf.
Cameras in cabinets can infer a lot about your activities in the same way the supermarkets have a bead on their customer behaviour. A clever assistant might examine inputs (food) and outputs (sensor in a toilet) and then ruminate on health and lifestyle issues. It might even have the courage to tell you to knock off the sugar before you become diabetic. It ought to be possible to understand mood, when the owner is forgetful or stressed and as it is isolated from third parties it should be able to rely on a record of common area conversations.
It's going to be much harder to disentangle multiple people cohabiting. The incentives are against a prohibition on uploading but without a firm stance in a world of shit security the owner's device becomes a telescreen. Remember the exercise trainer in 1984?
> For me personally, allowing thermostat to adjust room temperature based on my body temperature and air quality would be beneficial.
We could use a laser to take many temperature readings of the entire body (just before entering the shower). Variability in body temperature can be used to diagnosis disease, possibly other characteristics. The Qualified Self movement probably offers many other ideas here.
People can justify buying into the concept because it offers legitimate and measurable lifestyle improvements.