5. Does optimizing your home make life worse? Smart homes and thermostats
Andrew pokes holes in the very product that Joel helped build: a smart thermostat. The smart devices that we increasingly place in our homes have ecological impacts that are hard to assess and harder to predict. First, Joel recaps smart thermostats (1:05), and we discuss whether a so-called "smart home" makes your life easier or worse, including security vulnerabilities (15:00), the allure of big data (21:00), and how personalized optimization impacts family life (31:00). Then we try to bring it all together with the question of whether Jesus would use a smart home (37:30).
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Things cited:
Article which references Wendell Berry's argument of extensive (quantity and speed) vs intensive (quality and care).
The Wendell Barry essay itself.
Alastair Roberts on The Ecological Effect of Technology
John Dyer's From The Garden To The City
