I love new tech, but I'm cautious about home IOT devices like assistants, smart bulbs, smart locks, (...), because of privacy and cybersecurity issues. Even though they offer benefits, they don't seem very popular in France.
What do you think stops people from adopting personal IOT devices? Is it mostly privacy and cybersecurity, or is there another reason?
My wife bought an Alexa speaker for the kid's room, to help with setting alarms and remembering things, playing podcasts at night, and to use as an intercom: but all electronic devices in the kid's room exist in a baffling state of perpetual reorganization, everything with a plug being unplugged, moved around, and maybe or maybe not plugged back in, seemingly every day, for no apparent reason; so the speaker is mostly unusable.
Smart bulbs, I have never really seen the point: turning lights on and off is not difficult enough that any better a solution than the traditional switch would seem to be necessary.
I suppose I spend enough time dealing with tech as it is, and when I am home, I just want things to work. Simpler is better.
This is so accurate. We have at least a dozen USB power bricks floating around our house, even my charger isn't safe from being "borrowed".
I'm not really sure what those benefits are supposed to be. Your phone has an assistant built in. A smart bulb sounds like a novelty at best. A smart lock just lets you inside the house.
The benefits seem minimal, at non-zero cost. Americans can be pretty cheap.
We can also be pretty profligate, and I suspect that many of those IOT devices that do get sold are mostly ignored. People would buy them purely because they're "the best", and never actually use any of those features.
I'm sure privacy and security figure into it as well, though given how bad we are at privacy in other domains, I don't think it's the major factor. I think it's just a small negative that gets weighed against a positive that's hard to distinguish from zero.
Show me a computer system that can withstand direct exposure to the internet, without maintenance (and without active management), for a year, and I'll be surprised, and reconsider.
So, to get out from behind NAT, an external server is required, which raises all of the security and reliability problems. Plus, someone has to pay to keep those servers up and secure. This requires a subscription fee to be sustainable.
Besides that I don't have to accept any terms and conditions to turn my lights on. I am not tracked by my regular light switches.
b) What are the costs? Just about every person I know who got into IoT devices has regretted it within a few years (things break, manufacturers go out business, just keeping up with updates can be a pain)
Why even bother?
IOT for me seems to come from the perpsective that human beings are brainless, stupid and lazy and the thinking is that something technical can replace simple day to day human engagement with the world, stuff like locking and unlocking a door DOH!, turning a light bulb on and off DOH!, turning the radio on DOH!, setting an alarm clock DOH! and speaking to an inanimate object to select your favourite song DOH!.
Having IOT does not make life easier. Just use your hands and brain, thats why you have them.