Colm O'Regan: Smart devices are here to stay, even if they are bit too clever for their own good

Colm O'Regan: "I really don’t want a smart fridge. I don’t want a fridge telling the cloud about Monday Cans. Big Tech knows enough about me. It’s already sensed I’m writing this and is on its way as we speak."

Every so often there’s a headline that tells you: Oh no, we’re living in the future now. This week it’s “Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges”.

Ok class, there are some new words there for us to learn here. We are familiar with owners, mourning and spoiled food, but it all goes to shite after that. Firmware is software that runs a yoke’s hardware.

In your computer, software would be Microsoft Word; firmware is the thing that starts the computer up. An update is the thing you ignore on your computer repeatedly until it just does it itself anyway. It’s usually Adobe. Adobe is so needy. Bricking used to mean either putting a brick through someone’s window or being really afraid of something bad happening. So you could be bricking it about being bricked. Now bricking means the tech company you paid a load of money to for the swanky thing has just changed it remotely without asking you it so that it is as useful as a brick. But a brick you can’t throw or use to build a wall.

And then there’s the smart fridge. Sigh. In theory, it might be a good idea. A fridge that is connected to the internet (and maybe your Alexa, your watch and your enemies). It lets you know if you’re low on milk and adds it to your Smart Shopping List. It lets you know when things are out of date, so it could cut down on food waste. But there was also a thing called Opening the Door of the Fridge and Having a Look Inside. I know that was time-consuming because you had to open the door of the fridge and have a look inside.

In brief, the upshot of it is that Samsung released a software update that broke a load of fridges and the food went off. I don’t know how off it was. It may have been 2026 off. Which translated into a 1980s upbringing means “don’t mind that best before date they put that on it to cover themselves” and “just scrape off the mould”.

Bricking is a thing you’re going to hear a lot more about. You’re going to hear about cloud-connected cars that can be bricked remotely. It’ll just stop working. It might be the thing that eventually stops joyriders. Or else they’ll all concentrate on the remaining Avensises (or is it Avenses?), Passats and Focuses (or is it Focii?).

But also you can brick a car if the person doesn’t keep their payments up. That’s the case already in America, where they hate the consumer so much more than we do here. Yet.

The problem with all these things is that they start as a luxury or a toy and eventually become difficult to avoid as they become the only show in town. I really don’t want a smart fridge. I don’t want a fridge telling the cloud about Monday Cans. Big Tech knows enough about me. It’s already sensed I’m writing this and is on its way as we speak.

So it’s a no from me to smart home tech.

And then I heard about the smart toilet. It’s on the way. It’ll analyse with cameras and sensors and AI whatever is coming out of you and provide all sorts of information about gut health. There is a toothbrush that smells your breath and does the same.

As someone who firmly — if it’s a good day — believes that hips don’t lie and being between two stools is a happy place to be, I CRAVE that information. What comes out of me is who I really am. I am what I ate.

So you can pooh-pooh smart home devices all you want. They are coming for you. Even if sometimes they are too smart for their own good or your own.