Google buying Nest worries us. Like sending a recovering alcoholic a birthday bottle of scotch, the purchase will enable its worst big data behaviors. Our appliances and our social connections will be animated by the same technology. Our worry is how these two uses will come together.
We have smart thermostats, and soon refrigerators, stoves, coffee makers, rice cookers--if it has a plug, expect connections. Up until now, we lived in separate technology universes. We bought computers designed to call attention to their technology. Then we bought the backstage appliances, that do what we need and, past the first blush of a gleaming stainless finish, are used, but unnoticed.
That backstage is intimate. It is our first cup of coffee. Warming the house on a cold morning. The guilty pleasure of ice cream in the freezer. Appliances are an essential part of a modern home. Lose the refrigerator door, and most of us would lose half our family's memory. Our homes are the backstage for the world, where, as T.S. Elliot said, we "prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet."
Today our web life is separate from home life. What we choose to show the world is front stage and our fondness for rocky road is kept home backstage. Google buying Nest worries us. Like sending a recovering alcoholic a birthday bottle of scotch, giving Google a way into our homes will enable its worse big data behaviors. Now queue the jokes. You will need Google+ just to turn down their heat. But, the truth is a real anxiety, that the data-crunching goliaths of Google or Amazon will find their way into our intimate backstage, monetize it, and serve it back to us in a news feed.
Our concerns spooled out is that, over time, we find smart appliances seductively useful, just as we grew to rely on current ones. In our minds' recesses, we fear companies will use our laziness and desires to trap us into giving up our backstage data, that we will, in fact, need a Google+ account to run our homes.
Internet technology's growing reach requires mindfulness--not being lured by the new device, design or convenience, but instead distinguishing between the useful and the marketing. Consider the Amish. They do not drive cars or use iPads because they are very aware of technology's effect on lives. They adopt technology up to the point it disturbs their chosen quality of life, then just opt out. This technology will not happen to us, we will select it, or not. We can choose not to give out backstage passes if we want to keep big data at bay.