Are Smart Devices Making Us Dumb?
We become more reliant on smart devices every day, from thermostats that remember our ideal thermal comfort to doorbells that alert us when someone is outside. Smart home technologies are expected to grow by over 25% in 2019, with shipments of smart home selling more than 830 million as of August 2019.
A co-op space named Soft Surplus encountered an issue when upgrading their traditional “dumb” doorbell to a new smart device. This device was intended to decrease overall noise in the space and enabled everyone in the co-op space that a visitor was outside via an online chat room, but it did just the opposite. The old doorbell would reverberate through space, and someone would say, “I’ve got it.” It turned into an uncoordinated mess in the co-op space’s messaging board. The natural sound of the old doorbell would initiate a social interaction between members of the co-op space to signal off who would “answer the door.” Since notifications in the messaging application were sent asynchronously, and members could turn on “do-not-disturb.” The door would go unanswered and lead to heightened tensions in the office space. This led to the doorbell being replaced by an old-school loud ringing bell. This was not a failure of the technology, but of our innate social interactions, and maybe we do not need to rethink how we answer the door.
Be Good People!
