Kevin Rose, of Digg fame, wrote a blog post yesterday about the upcoming revolution of the TV. A sentiment that I of course agree with. However, trying to think one step ahead, it makes sense to envision that the next big device that will get “smart,” is the car. And when this happens soon, everything else will follow.So, I personally believe that within 10 years time, every major electronic device will run a smart OS. Most of these devices would be interconnected on the home network, and they will expose special info that your main controlling device, e.g. a tablet, or a smartphone, will “understand” and build a GUI for it, on the fly. The electronics needed for it would be cheap.
So if you want to reduce the temperature of your fridge, or turn on your oven so food will be ready by the time you get home (obviously not a safe idea, but it could be done), or turn off the lights on your home, turn on your Roomba, program these disco lights, move your hi-fi’s audio output from room to room as you walk by, shoot that video from your digicam strapped on your tripod by using your tablet as its preview device, or open the garage door for your returning-from-shopping wife who forgot the keys, you could do that, all from the other side of the planet if necessary.
By that time, running a base smart OS with some wireless abilities, will be cheap. Right now, some such home-automation solutions exist, but they are pretty expensive, not as extensive in terms of device support, and they require special software on the client. Obviously, we could do better than that. We could extend support to every device, and make this “data translation” a standard.
Going a step further, I like to imagine this base OS to be the same for all devices. Be it Android or (an open version of) iOS, I think it would be beneficial for everyone to run the same OS. This way, firmware updates could be easier, since there would be active development of the base OS.
Some people might not see the benefit of it all, they might even find the whole thing silly. “Why the heck would I want my fridge to by smart?”, they’d say. However, I’m pretty sure that if you could transport someone from 1950 in 1980, he would also find silly 1980’s TV remote controls. “Move your a$$ and change the channel manually”, he’d think. “I can’t believe how lazy people have become in 1980”, he’d continue. But truth is, automation and remote controlling your assets is one of these things that need to be experienced before people can’t live without them.
Oh QNX, I would like to see you going from powering 12% of the electonical devices in my home to somewhere around 100%. It’s very very possible, and cheap (OS cost aside), using current tech…
It’s as I suspected: OSAlert is made of cats!
Just to piss off all the dog lovers, too.
Good gravy, not everyone introverted and tech-savvy is into cats
Hell I couldn’t even read whole article because ads, I mean cats. Where can I download CatBlock plus?
You joke, but I stopped reading as the article lost all credibility when it became obvious that more time was spent adding dumb LOLCAT (or whatever the meme is called) pictures than was spent writing a balanced, insightful and potentially thought-provoking piece.
Very disappointing article. If I wanted this level reporting then I’d have navigated to 4chan instead of OSAlert.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I worry enough about my car alarm remote (a single-purpose device) de-activating the alarm by accident. If I had a device that also controlled the oven, stereo and fridge, make the paranoia 3x as bad; the damn thing could have easily burned down the entire house (oven), melted, thawed, and spoiled hundreds of dollars worth of food (freezer/refrigerator), and cranked the stereo to ridiculously high levels without my direct knowledge attracting the police to break in since no one’s even home to know about it. Face it: There is no need, and only bad consequences (that I can think of at least) for carrying an all-in-ine remote control. I already dislike all the fancy crap that goes into cars these days (seatbelt, windshield washer fluid, turn signal, and various other “warnings” and indicators drive me f***ing nuts, yet they keep adding more noises and other junk like auto-locking doors and lights/arrows on side mirrors).
Edited 2010-08-23 20:58 UTC
Ok … let’s suppose it will happen. The big question, however, rises:
*where, oh where is THE SECURITY?*
I’d *never* allow even myself to control my critical infrastructures remotely [by critical I mean the ones I’m heavily depending on, like door keys, light switches, refridgerator’s FW and stuff], simply because it poses additional vilnerability to these infrastructures. It’s like doing wholes in your raft purposely, which sounds like a really bad idea.
Really, can you trust the world, can you trust yourself that much?
I may be a part of an ‘oldschool’ security-oriented thinking, but isn’t it thinking most people probobly need nowadays, when you face so critical failures with social engineering threats, misconfigurational problems and other anthropocentric issues?
Comfort or security? I always choose latter, ’cause there’s no comfort without security in place *first*.
>*where, oh where is THE SECURITY?*
As technology progresses, so is security. And so is anti-security hacks too, of course. The point is, whenever there’s a step ahead, there’s a counter-step too. Security will be taken care of as much as possible by the designers, and of course, so the hackers will too.
30-40 years ago people would NOT trust plastic money. They’d think you’re crazy for having one. They would find it insecure. But I bet you have one! EVEN after all these credit card or ID thefts happening every SECOND in the world! And yet, you still use yours.
Same with such new tech novelties, the right technology to secure your assets will be built. And at the same time, hackers will work hard to break them too. But the majority of people will still use these new “smart” products. If you don’t, they will think “you’re old”, and that “you don’t get it”.
That’s how it goes you know.
The teenagers that used to listen to grunge, still like that kind of music. Today, these same people have families, and kids of their own. And their kids are listening to bands like Animal Collective. Most parents DON’T GET that kind of new avant-garde music.
It’s the same with technology. You must adapt, or you will be viewed the same way you view your parents or grandparents in terms of technology.
Of course, you can always CHOOSE to not follow this kind of tech. But don’t be pissed of when younger people will laugh at you for not having “such basic amenities in your life”. They won’t understand YOU.
I will understand you, because I’m coming from the same TIME as you are. But they won’t.
The key factor there is that credit card fraud is no risk to me. Visa and Master Card take most of the risk for me. If they didn’t and people where personally responsible for all losses due to credit card fraud then you’d see much less trust in “plastic money” and much higher demand for real and more effective security. So as such people don’t trust plastic money, they trust the company behind it to reimburse them when things go wrong.
New markets for insurance, and new security policies/laws/ordinances/ways will emerge. This is a non-issue. The reaction about security around here is the same as old-style people do when something new comes around. The market ADAPTS at the end.
I don’t have a credit card and probably never will. I have an ATM card though.
My kid isn’t.
Yeah well, a lot of the music I listened to when I was young and my parents “did not understand” was in fact pretty shite. Some of it will last, much of it will become “holy shit, I LIKED this back then? OMG what a moron I was”.
The same kind that credit cards are using, ie virtually none?
I’m sure there will be a phase where everything has remote control but as everything else it wil pass once people realize that it’s not practical or necessary. Then some devices will remain with remote control where it makes sense and some will not. Then as time passes we’ll realize how silly it was to put remote control on everything.
Many parents were listing to Pink Floyd, Yes and other such “avant-garde” music when they were kids. Many parents listen to Jazz now.
I don’t think it’s the “avant-garde” music that parents struggle to relate to, it’s that BS generic pop and hip-hop / RnB (which has absolutely nothing to do with Rhythm and Blues) that parents do get. It’s music that’s been factory engineered with zero creativity nor longevity but 100% marketed at kids to part said kids from their pocket money, that parents don’t get.
It’s also over the top screaming vocals drowned out by distorted guitars playing toneless melodies that conform to generic stereotypes of their respective genres, that parents don’t get. Music like that predominantly sells to kids not because “parents” don’t get it, but because it’s shit. It’s the kind of shit that you like as a kid but grow out of once your musical pallet expands and educates.
Not all the music I liked as a kid was hated by my parents, but the vast majority that was hated I now dislike too. And those that they liked (or was indifferent to) I still listen to. I’m sure this trend is true for most families too. The fact is parents do understand good music. It’s just the majority of the stuff kids listen to isn’t that good as the vast majority of music released isn’t that great. It takes time to find good artists and good music. And thus it takes time for kids to discover them.
This might sound anal, but I’m never pretended to be anything other than a music snob. However I’m a musical snob with a wide variety of genres in my vinyl (yes I said vinyl) collection and a huge appreciation for good music regardless of it’s style.
I was not talking of the total rejection of these technologies. I was rather thinking of responsible use, which is directly related to knowledge and consciousness. Most people turn something on and use it without even considering security. All I ask of them is to think securely, not to avoid technology by all means.
Plus: there is quite of difference between local and remote vulnerabilities …
Regards
Edited 2010-08-25 12:57 UTC
You can also ask it the other way around.
What if you got a message saying the alarm went of while you were out of the house.
Would you like a camera in the house which you can use to see what is going on ?
Or are you afraid someone will use the camera to spy on you while you are home ?
And to be honest, I don’t really know what is better.
What if you got a message saying the alarm went of while you were out of the house.
Being alarmed about a trigger that goes off is quite different than controlling a possibly dangerous device remotely.
Reading this article I came up with multiple problems that’d need to be sorted. First, manufacturer’s will try to restrict people from using other manufacturers’ devices to control their ones and will do anything they can to stop people from using “unofficial” methods. This will delay the technology atleast 10 years.
Second, once the manufacturers create a common protocol than can by used by all the manufacturers they render all their old devices obsolete and people will try to hang on to their old ones as long as possible. A knee-jerk reaction, so to speak. This will further delay the adoption.
Third, and most important, is the security. I can bet my ass off that there is going to be some big gaping holes in the protocol at first and this creates a terrible opportunity for just plain malicious people: they can hack their way through to your devices remotely and can either keep turning everything on all the time, everything off all the time, setting oven to max when you’re not around and causing fire and whatnot..
Being able to remote-control possibly dangerous devices isn’t a smart move in the first place and as greedy companies seldom are smart they’ll try to cut corners at first and result in just making things even worse.
I admit that being able to _read_ a device’s state from afar would likely be a useful addition. But I’ll never admit that being able to _set_ a device’s state same way will always be a good idea.
Heh, it’s just like SNMP!
The problem is that most of new devices have some sort of remote vulnerabilities and always will have them.
The bigger problem is that most of these devices have many features turned on automatically exposing you to many dangers. That is a huge problem.
“OPT-IN by default” is the plague of our modern world.
We already have a cross-platform description technology which allows the automatic creation of user interfaces. It’s called HTML!
I actually want to do some of this home automation and remote control she speaks of. I agree that most (more complex) devices will be uP-based and running some sort of OS (as opposed to bare-metal software). Heck, they already are; my TV does (Linux), my Blu-ray player does. I’ve seen refrigerators with color LCD screens and ports for USB sticks. (Oh — and ovens have had start/stop timers for many years.)
I’m afraid, though, the problem in 10 years will be the same one we have now; all these systems will be proprietary, and despite being on your home network, they won’t talk to each other unless they have the same manufacturer’s label on them. If they have Internet capability you will have to run the vendor’s crappy software on some Windows PC to use it, or sign up on their web site, or whatever. Some of it will be Linux-based, but with binary blob drivers that don’t allow customization or fixing security holes (and security will likely be an afterthought). iOS or Android? Less likely I think.
We’ll likely see lively hacking scenes dedicated to kitchen appliances and home electronics, skirting the DMCA as the tech adventurers take back ownership of their purchased devices
The tech is here and available. It’s the corporate mindset that’s stuck in the 1950s.
All that said, there are some open-source projects dedicated to that sort of thing. I don’t need to be tweaking my refrigerator temp from work, but I’d like to be able to look in on my video surveillance, change my thermostat, turn on/off lights, and maybe unlock a back door to let a friend or family member in in a pinch (you know, in case the retina scanner wasn’t working
Audio switching would be good, too, though having it follow you from room to room if you didn’t live by yourself might annoy your family/housemates. I think I could do it all securely enough for my needs.
I’m still not letting the “black-box” TV and Blu-ray player out of my local network, though
a herf=”http://kevinrose.com/blogg/2010/8/21/why-apples-itv-will-change-eve…
Edited 2010-08-23 22:21 UTC
Smart cars? Yes, I want one which can drive itself, especially in inner cities and long, boring motorway journeys!
if that last one where to say with button make stallman bring FUD i would say the Linux without GNU button…
This is just so straigth out of the 50’s. Maybe the husband will also be able to remotely stuff his pipe?
I dont see a big benefit of this for the consumers and I really doubt it would be the case anyway.
It’s more important that open and unencumbered standards are used for interfacing with the devices and that the API’s are wel documented.
I’m not sure I understand the hype about remote controlling everything. There is a reason that none of this exists right now. It’s not software or cost. It’s that people don’t want it.
Is this system really going to make your life that much easier? Do you really want to be glued to your magic “tablet” that controls everything all day? Is it really that hard to walk over to the refrigerator if you want to change the temperature? Do you really want to accept the security risks? Are you super lazy?
Unless the average person can say “yes” to all those questions, this is not going to happen.
Also, I found this article quite poorly written. I think the cats were just to cover up the fact that the article has almost zero content.
I really like computers, but I can’t stand the complicated GUIs and stupid software of various electronic devices like cellphones or tv decoders.
If I can’t SSH into the thing, I prefer it to be manual and stupid rather than “smart”.
There is, in this society, no way to make software for embedded devices that is both standardized and well mantained for a long time. Sad but true.
So computers only for me.
For fun I once set up my computer in such a way that I could control my computers LPT-port via my phone.
It became a hobby for my friend and me to make it possible to remote control everything with it. I used relays to control the lights, a relay with a little electric-motor to control the thermostat, I could do everything. We stopped with it though after we came to the conclusion that all of it was useless.
Controlling the refrigerator remotely? How often does this situation occur:
You sitting in your living room enjoying a nice film, when suddenly you think. “Oh, that is what was bugging me all that time, the temperature of the fridge is set way to high. I’d better do something about it, this can’t wait. Dear, now I have to pause the film and walk all the way there…. Well this ruins the evening. Oh how I wished I could do it via a remote controller.”
For me, this didn’t happen EVER. Come to think of it, I only adjusted the fridges temperature once, when I thought the milk wasn’t cold enough.
In movies from the sixties you often see the remote control everything situation in visions of the future. The technology was there than and wasn’t overly expensive….maybe there is a reason I still can’t turn on my shower via remote control??
Edited 2010-08-25 15:29 UTC
I can’t disagree more about it working with only one operating system. People should be able to create aps for this on all mobile and desktop computers. Leaving this to one OS cuts out any reason for improving the quality and improving the features.
Competition is the key. I don’t want to go back to a mostly Windows only world. It was not a good time in life. If there was more competition when Windows XP came out it wouldn’t have taken Microsoft 5 years to create Vista and it wouldn’t have been a piece of ****.
Look at how fast Windows 7 came out. Microsoft had to get out something a lot better as fast as they could after putting their foot in it. That happened because of Mac OS X and Linux really showing that they can move up the market share. Macs more than Linux though.
What about cars. Henry Ford would have us still driving Model T cars, and still only having the choice of black or black or black.
Competition is what keeps car companies making newer and (usually) better cars. The same is true with computer hardware and software. We NEED competition as much as we need air to breath.
I would love to be able to do in what you describe what you described in this article. As long as MS isn’t behind it, and I’m not sure about Google.
Edited 2010-08-25 16:44 UTC
this is such old news. right now, as you read this, I am being operated remotely. it turns out that a dome of tinfoil pressed over the scalp creates the best receiving antenna.