I could see your point if we completely ignore the circumstances surrounding the technology. The best metaphor I can think of is star trek. It has to be envisioned as a post scarcity environment for the technology that’s portrayed to be positive and not some new kind of repression or extraction.

If we lived in a world where the labor saving technologies that comprise smarthomes weren’t used to justify getting worked to the bone even more than you already are or to make it acceptable for energy prices to do anything but rise or to continue to allow climate inappropriate bottom of the barrel housing to be built in places like phoenix then I’d have a different view.

I see smarthome technology as a relatively simple tool, but my understanding doesn’t stop at the recognition that “it’s a hammer”, it extends out to “who is swinging it?” and “why do my fingers hurt so much?”.

It’s just really easy to make that criticism of smarthomes because all their benefits are easily, cheaply and efficiently replicated:

Put your standby stuff on power strips and turn the little red switch off when you’re not using them. Alternately, don’t do this because they’re designed to be left on standby, the power drain is negligible (even if you completely dismiss my reply and block me, buy a kill-a-watt type meter so you can know for sure) and stuff like the ps4 can get fucked up if you turn it off without telling it you’re about to.

Make checking your doors part of your nightly routine. It doesn’t matter a bit if all the doors are locked if one of them is not quite shut or the electronic lock fails for some reason. Before you say you’ve never seen that happen, I have seen it happen hundreds of times in my workplace.

I’m willing to concede that minmaxing the hvac is something smarthome technology is good at, but it can be implemented by itself, apart from the smarthome ecosystem and can be replicated by opening and closing windows, putting on or taking off a coat or just - and I know I’ve ambiguously alluded to this already - not having a climate inappropriate home to start with.

You can get the same effect of dimming lights by switching from bright overheads to dim lamps instead. It’s really cozy.

A few summers ago our local power company sent around mailers asking us to “beat the peak”. We put the washing machine on one of those old electromechanical timers and set to go off in a few hours and turned it on. The dryer was harder, because it requires a button press but we just put up a clothesline in the yard instead of messing with some simple way to automate it. You don’t wanna be running that thing while no one’s around anyway.

All simple, sub 5 minute tasks that give a better understanding and arguably a better routine to the household and require little to no computing or automation. Except for not putting stickbuilt houses in places that they don’t make sense. I can’t help you there.

To reiterate: the technology itself isn’t the problem, it’s the world it’s a component of that makes me dislike it. In a just and sustainable world smarthome shit would be good.