LAS VEGAS — A troubling pattern has gripped the consumer electronics world. It launches this week at CES, the tech sector's biggest yearly showcase, where makers scramble to link the most absurd objects to the web. This season's roster of "smart" merchandise features cushions, air fresheners, and even commodes.
Within a few months, a different news cycle will surface: The connected gizmo you purchased is covertly surveilling you. (Cushions and commodes disclose a surprising amount about a person.) Eventually, the headlines turn grim: Your connected gizmo has been breached.
That will inevitably be succeeded by: Your connected gizmo is collecting dust in storage.
Consumer electronics are broken. That complaint echoed endlessly from vendors and veteran tech observers who also embarked on a dreary quest for major ideas at this CES. Little justifies envy toward the 2018 lineup of televisions, self-driving vehicles remain years away, and artificial intelligence still requires maturation. The peak moment at CES arrived Wednesday when the electricity cut out for two hours and attendees had to step outside into daylight.
The Consumer Technology Association forecasts Americans will acquire 715 million networked tech products in 2018. Far too many of them generate more headaches than solutions. A wave of suspicion toward Silicon Valley is sweeping across countless individuals who keep a smartphone within reach, yet worry those devices are degrading our existence.
Roaming the CES exhibit floors and absorbing the keynote addresses, I identified recurring mistakes by gadget creators—and a handful of promising concepts that could improve their offerings.
Here are four strategies to restore greatness to gadgets.
Honor our time
The day still contains only 24 hours, though you'd never guess it from the parade of CES products eager to occupy every previously idle moment with new stimulation. Talking spectacles? How about an enormous touchscreen fridge? Samsung, one of the planet's biggest screen producers, screened a clip during its keynote depicting a child in a near-future world who shifts from staring at his handset to climbing into a vehicle where another massive display slides before his face. He remains unstimulated for under a second.
Here's a practical guideline: Before releasing a product, ask yourself: What would the "Black Mirror" episode about this technology look like?
Apple isn't exempt. Two of its biggest shareholders issued an unusual open appeal to Apple's board last Saturday urging the company to confront the "habit-forming" impact of the iPhone on children. That's a massive problem, but I'd extend that concern to grown-ups as well: How many of us have grabbed a phone to dispatch a text only to be pulled into a whirlpool of diversions? Before you realize it, you're browsing Gal Gadot's Wikipedia entry and can't recall your original purpose.
Answers won't arrive easily, especially for platforms like Facebook and Google that profit by auctioning our attention to advertisers. But I'm heartened to encounter products exploring not how to consume more of our hours, but rather how to use our time wisely. Carmakers are engineering software that not only silences our handsets during driving, but intelligently manages incoming messages and voice calls. Samsung is also debuting soon a new "Thrive" application, created alongside Arianna Huffington, aimed at helping people unplug from their phones.
Security is not our job
When I buy a car, seatbelts and bumpers don't come as separate purchases—I trust the manufacturer handled safety. Yet the electronics industry largely dumps security duties on us, marketing far too many connected products that resemble automobiles with zero-star crash ratings. The past several years have produced nightmare after nightmare about infiltrated gadgets: toys that spy and nursery cameras streaming online without parents' knowledge.
Hooking anything to the web carries risk. Yet fundamentals could shield these devices from becoming hacker targets, such as delivering remote firmware upgrades, running penetration testing, and enforcing robust credentials. (It's shocking how many smart home products skip even those basics.) Privacy carries equal weight: If you build a connected toilet, why must you log every flush? And to whom is that data flowing?
The United States trails Europe in regulations defending consumer information, though some firms are beginning to recognize the stakes. Samsung announced it would integrate its Knox security suite into upcoming generations of connected appliances. There's also a faint signal of progress in a modest yet expanding category of products operating as antivirus for your entire residence. These offerings, such as Bitdefender Box, Dojo by Bullguard, Cujo, and the Norton Core, scan for abnormal behavior on your household network—say, a thermostat that inexplicably begins funneling video to Russia. I'd love to see these capabilities embedded into more domestic Wi-Fi routers.
Focus on the "Internet of Services," not the "Internet of Things"
Networking a refrigerator carries no inherent value—it simply inflates the cost. What carries value: a fridge perpetually stocked with fresh milk, automatically placing orders when supplies run low. Tech firms chase expansion of the "Internet of Things" (IoT) with ever-growing rosters of objects, yet to penetrate more households, connected devices must tackle genuine problems. For that we need an "Internet of Services."
Smart door locks point toward this future. A company called August unveiled a delivery partnership at CES with logistics firm Deliv. It would enable yet-to-be-named participating merchants to deposit purchases directly inside your doorway.
Home protection illustrates this better still. The firm ADT recently extended its home-monitoring platform to third-party DIY offerings from Smart Things rather than limiting access to its proprietary lineup. Consequently, your personal connected smoke detector, entry sensors, and water-leak alarms can now signal human monitors, who you compensate with a no-commitment monthly payment to intervene—such as summoning police when you're not home. Naturally, this demands that all devices communicate with each other—or at minimum, with ADT. Why can't our connected gear simply get along?
Don't lock us in
Amazon and Google commanded disproportionate attention at CES despite unveiling minimal first-party hardware. They devoted enormous energy to coaxing gadget creators into embedding their voice platforms Alexa and Google Assistant into their products. (Amazon CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) This represents a campaign to capture richer intelligence about how we live in our homes.
It doubles as an effort to manufacture our loyalty. You might enjoy Alexa, but do you genuinely want her wired into your household? (Amazon stumbled along this road last year with its Amazon Key in-home delivery service that binds you to the retailer.) And what happens if a future product only pairs with Siri? I've got four distinct voice helpers on various devices around my home, but unfortunately my virtual staff fails to coordinate.
I was pleased to encounter gadgets at CES attempting to remain impartial. The connected toilet from Kohler? It operates with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri. That's progress.
Voice-controlled commodes and electrified headbands promising weight loss rank among the wildest tech products that Post writers Geoffrey A. Fowler and Hayley Tsukayama uncovered at CES 2018. (Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)
