Buh-Bye Safe Spaces: On Sheltering in the Connected Home
Since we’re all spending so much time at home as a result of offices having been slow to re-open in many places, or people have opted not to return, we felt that it’s a good time to check in on the progress of the Internet of Things (IoT). Good place to start: this TED 2018 presentation on What your smart devices know (and share) about you. We’ve come a long way since then, baby – or at least technology has. Many of us are more or less stuck in our homes – and time to look at the data they’re collecting.
“There are smart lights, smart locks, smart toilets, smart toys, smart sex toys. Being smart means the device can connect to the internet, it can gather data, and it can talk to its owner.
“But once your appliances can talk to you, who else are they going to be talking to? I wanted to find out, so I went all-in and turned my one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco into a smart home. I even connected our bed to the internet. As far as I know, it was just measuring our sleeping habits. I can now tell you that the only thing worse than getting a terrible night’s sleep is to have your smart bed tell you the next day that you “missed your goal and got a low sleep score,” said Kashmir Hill, one of the two presenters, and a journalist who covers privacy and security for Gizmodo.
