Shoutout to the hospital in Cincinnati that made me rethink my smart home

I was there visiting a relative last fall, and their new patient tracking system had a huge screen at the nurse's station showing everyone's room, condition, and med schedule. It was efficient, but it felt like watching a logistics dashboard for people. Now I've unplugged my own voice assistant and smart doorbell. Where do we draw the line between helpful data and treating human lives like inventory? Has anyone else scaled back their connected devices after a similar moment?

4 comments

4 Comments

grays133mo ago

My buddy saw his smart fridge tracking his beer consumption.

tara6423mo ago

Actually, that's probably the app tracking what gets scanned at the door, not the fridge itself watching him grab cans. Those inventory features just guess based on what you tell it you bought. In my experience, half the time it thinks the milk is gone because the barcode got scanned wrong. The tech is way dumber than people give it credit for. It's more about selling you on a fancy feature than actually spying on your habits.

grays133mo ago

Tara642 is right, that stuff is usually too dumb to be scary.

vera_johnson91mo ago

Wait, is that actually true about the barcode thing? I always figured these smart fridges were way more advanced than they let on, like they'd track everything with sensors or something. But if they're just guessing based on what gets scanned, that changes things. I used to think the whole setup was creepy and too smart for its own good, but honestly, this makes more sense. Sounds like it's mostly just a guessing game with the data, not some big spying operation.