Bookmarked this NYTimes.com article on the digital home and its discontents several days ago. Written by James Gleick, whom I’ve read regularly, this essay points out that our implementation of technology in the home is ahead of the maturation necessary to make the technologies used invisible. Plug and play? No way.
Once you’ve entered the future, be prepared for a double-edged question: Is your house smarter than you are? You’re likely to hear it from your spouse, who just wants to watch TV, while you struggle with the combined TiVo-DVD-satellite remote control.
I’ve been there, with the TiVo, and I still have printed-out instructions from the TiVo website about how I might be able to use a splitter to watch some shows at the same time as we record something else. But I’m reluctant to take the plunge, after the recent Comcast debacles. Gleick goes on:
It falls to the homeowner to serve as local information-technology manager. After all, with power comes responsibility. Someone must take charge of operating these new and complex devices, not to mention the programming and systems design. The homeowner spends increasing time alone in an important new room, a room off-limits to some members of the household: the wiring closet. User manuals proliferate. Sometimes it is even necessary to read them — necessary, but not sufficient.
We (well, not me) are very good about keeping and organizing all our manuals. I do read many of them, for the technical equipment. The experience doesn’t leave me feeling informed and educated. May I blame the manuals?
But how many individual remote controls can one person want? Generally, the answer is one. So we need one more smart helpmeet: the programmable remote, a computer in itself, with hard and ”soft” buttons and scroll wheels and touchscreens and trackballs. And very large manuals.
We haven’t taken that plunge, as we attempt to use only the TiVo remote. For most things, it suffices… and that’s good enough.
Our technolust and Luddite impulses have rarely been so provoked — and at the same time and in the same people. Workplaces and cars have plenty of resonance, but the home is special: hearth, womb — place of succor, not bewilderment. So Smart Houses cause both stress and exhilaration, and the emotions are hard to separate. ”For those of us who don’t want to have any part in restructuring our lives, it’s daunting,” says a New York psychotherapist whose home I.T. manager is his wife.
I’m the tech geek in the family, and the AV system challenges my geek cred every day. I’ll just try and upgrade the computers to MacOS X 10.3 (laptop done, smoothly… desktop, waiting to back all the data up first).