Smart Everything Isn’t Necessarily a Good Thing
All those smart devices seem to have taken the next step. Whether for good or bad is a matter of opinion though. With the falling price of sensors, almost every item can be fitted with one. Add a piece of software, often free, and you could be “seeing social engineering disguised as product engineering”. Huh? Take BinCam, a good old trash bin fitted with a smartphone on the top lid. When you drop stuff into the bin, it takes a pic, sends it to Mechanical Turk where freelancers check if your garbage proves whether or not you really care for the environment! And eventually, your photo appears on your Facebook page…to shame you. At least the BinCam is voluntary, you might say. And the idea is positive: to shame you into being better. Similar ideas include smart scales that tweet your weight online to add pressure on you to stick to that diet; smart medicine bottles that ping you and your doc if you aren’t taking that medication; smart forks that tell you are eating too fast and sma...