What exactly does a “smart toilet” do better than a dumb one?
In California I knew a guy in the movie biz who had networked his whole house. First time I ever saw a connected toaster, first time I ever saw a house with its own server room. He was so proud. And when the network crashed – which it did within weeks, due (I’m told) to some sort of virus – the poor guy couldn’t make coffee.
It struck me as a very strange thing to do, but then he was kind of a strange guy.
They say that Louis XIV had the inscription Ultima Ratio Regum cast into all the cannon of the French Army. It means “The Ultimate Argument of Kings,” and that always struck me as one of the most honest and up-front things any ruler or would-be ruler ever said. “We can dress it up prettier than this, but when it comes down to the unvarnished truth this is what it’s about: You’ll do as I say or I’ll send my goons to kill you.”
I thought about that for a long time. If there’s an ultimate argument, it seems only logical that there must be an ultimate answer. For years I thought the ultimate answer must be the bullets in my rifle, but it never seemed quite right. I’ve got bullets – he’s got frigging Cannon Balls. I mean, if there were three hundred million rifles throwing bullets at him, then maybe. But we all know that’s not going to happen. So if there’s an ultimate answer to his ultimate argument, it sure as hell ain’t bullets.
It finally came to me – and that’s when I abandoned the city and most of my stuff, and gave all that was behind me a good stiff Randian Shrug.
The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.
Little Bear 2009-2018
Laddie the Amazing Torso Boy 2011-2020
"Freedom Outlaw. It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it. It’s an attitude — from which actions always follow. It’s a do-it-yourself occupation. And a lifetime vocation."
- Claire Wolfe, Backwoods Home Companion, 6-07-10
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
- G. K. Chesterton
"If every Jewish and anti-Nazi family in Germany had owned a Mauser rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition and the will to use it, Adolf Hitler would be a little-known footnote to the history of the Weimar Republic."
- Aaron Zelman
"Authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat of force."
- Barbie
"Never underestimate the ability of shit to find a fan."
- F. Paul Wilson
"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." The sophistry of villains - Bah!
- Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star
“Truth is, I’m not specifically interested in an armed society. What I want is a free society.”
- George Potter
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
- D. H. Lawrence
Aristippus passed Diogenes as he was washing lentils.
He said, “If you could but learn to flatter the king, you would not have to live on lentils.”
Diogenes said, “And if you could learn to live on lentils, you would not have to flatter the king.”
Sandy Hook was a Gun Free Zone. So was the Westroads Mall. And the Aurora Theater. And Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Should I go on? They were all Gun Free Zones.Â
– Reality
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
- Robert A. Heinlein
"Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
- Ayn Rand
If ever a man should ask you
For your business or your name
Tell him to go and fuck himself
Tell his friends to do the same.
For a man who'd trade his liberty
For a safe and dreamless sleep
Doesn't deserve the both of them
And neither shall he keep.
- Frank Turner
Don't be afraid to try something big, just because you're an amateur. The Ark was built by amateurs. The Titanic was built by professionals.
- Anon
"Nothing scares a police officer more than the threat of being treated the way that they treat people every day."
- Anon
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."
- Gen. James Mattis
"Lust for power is the most flagrant of all the passions."
- Tacitus
"The man who knows what freedom means will find a way to be free."
- F.A. "Baldy" Harper
"The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude."
- William James
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
- Viktor Frankl
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.
- Milton Friedman
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
- William Faulkner
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
- Ernest Hemingway
"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
John Moses Browning - The most badass Mormon who ever lived.
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'"
- Ronald Reagan
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
- James A. Baldwin
"It is better to be a warrior in a garden than to be a gardener in a war."
- Anon
“I tried to live in such a way that, when dying, I would rather feel happy than scared.”
– Witold Pilecki
Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.
- Sallust
"Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark."
- Lazarus Long
Read, every day, something no one else is reading.
Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.
It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
– Â Christopher Morley
“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.”
-Frederick Douglass
ESSE QUAM VIDERI –
To be, rather than to seem
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
“A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”
– Ida B. Wells
Do what thy manhood bid thee do; from none but self expect applause.
He noblest lives and noblest dies, who makes and keeps his self made laws
– Sir Richard Burton
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
– Winston Churchill
“Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Dance as though no one is watching you. Love as though you have never been hurt before. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth.”
― Father Alfred d’Souza
Trust a computer to make my toast or coffee? Not happening. 🙂
I’ve flirted with a treatment of this kind of thing. One of the costs of allegedly advanced tech needs to be measured in reduction of human abilities. You could call — and maybe measure — such costs Units of Self Sufficiency. Take away enough of them and you’re left with a a community of button-pushing, screen-scraping dorks in Google glasses who can’t boil coffee; might not even understand the concept.
Though I’m not exactly sure what a smart toilet does, I know one thing it doesn’t do. It doesn’t function when the power’s off. I have rich friends who installed “smart” toilets in their home. Couple of years later, their area was hit by a gigantic storm. Everybody had problems — downed trees, missing roof tiles, etc. But my privileged friends were the only ones who couldn’t use their toilets for the next week.
What’s even more ironic is that they were semi-preppers. They had a big cistern of water, a pantry full of food, and no toilets.
“Smart” homes? Uh uh. Dumb idea.
Joel, the thing is you asked the right question, “why”. To often they do this without asking themselves why. What are the ramifications. Are there ethical issues involved…..,
One of the cons you already mentioned, Jim mentioned the other which is allowing tech to become a surrogate brain for you.
However being an uber computer geek I can come upwith a few “whys”. Unfortunately these have ethical implications.
For instance a smart toilet can collect data. what data depends on the interfaces involved. It can be simply bowl movement frequency, time on toilet, or even chem panel urinalysis. This data can be stored along with the data of an activity monitor bracelet/watch info. Add a smart weight scale and smart fridge and you have a complete health profile instantly at your finger tips. Add a simple AI algorithm to mine and monitor the data and you can be notified of dangerous outlier/out of bound conditions automatically.
Now you know that if this was offered by a biz or gov it would be in the “cloud” and not on your network.
So ask yourself, “Is this info something I trust laying around?”
All great reply’s gals and guys. I wouldn’t have any of that crap here either. I buy my appliances from the used appliance store just to avoid crap like that and to get a better quality product. My neighbor had one of those smart washing machines, and his wife told him to go buy a old used one, as the smart one was so “stupid” it didn’t clean the clothes.
I do have a computer server in the closet though, just because I can, and know how to run the system. I have security cameras around the property and they are all fed into the server.
Several of you mentioned that tech is replacing smarts and skills in the user’s available panoply. Of course it is. It has been since time immemorial, or at least since we started getting tech.
Once it was discovered that flint rocks could start a fire, how many men could use a bow-drill? Once the mechanical thresher was invented, men started forgetting how to properly thresh wheat. Streets have all but negated the need to learn navigation skills. Google has destroyed the Dewey decimal system. Once the automobile came about, the knowledge on caring for and housing horses became relegated to hobbyists. Even good mechanics these days have never filed a set of points, and have no idea where to even start. Flip a switch, start a fire – how many men could start a fire outside, even with matches and lighters? Municipal tap systems give us clean water; how many of you know, off the top of your head, how to sterilize water to make it safe to drink? How many drops of iodine per quart, and wait time before drinking? Caps of bleach per gallon? Minutes to boil at XX feet above sea level? Tech leads us all into not knowing these things, and we damn sure better.
The problem that I have is the erosion of necessary capability. You can live without knowing how to take care of a horse, even if cars went away. You cannot live without knowing how to make a fire if you’re ever stuck outside in the cold. You can live without knowing how to thresh wheat, but knowing how to cook something well enough that it’s safe to eat? You need that.
But I don’t blame tech. I like tech. Anything that makes my life easier, I embrace (although I’m still not sure why the hell you’d want a smart toilet – I don’t even want to consider the ramifications of a hacked smart toilet, much less one with a virus), but there is a point where a responsible human will at least try to learn the necessary skills that will be needed if we return to a tech-null condition some day in the future. I’m not even talking apocalypse, here – think Hurricane Katrina… Another one to consider – you’ve got contacts over the internet, but how many people do you know in meatspace that you could team up with to pool resources and knowledge if the internet goes henshit and you’re in a SHTF situation?
Where are you going to get your water when the tap stops running? Your food when the shelves are empty? You can lament the loss of skills due to tech all you want, but also be aware of the skills YOU’VE lost due to tech, too. We all have. Every one of us.
Dick – even if it is on “your network” there are simple exploits to gain access to it unless you are a tech security whiz kid. Not sure why someone would want this information, but I am pretty naiive and innocent about shady, back-alley stuff in general.
I thought everyone learned how to start a fire in Scouts, using bow, flint, wire-wool and torch battery, eyeglasses and sunshine, pot-perm pool oxiginator mixed with antifreeze, and arc from a camera-flash capacitor. I know I’ve done field-repair of electronics using a heated ten-penny nail as a soldering iron.
It does rather bug me that my coffee-maker requires the time to be set before it will brew coffee. I can deal with lots of adversity, but not before my morning coffee.