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.
• Ecobee
• Alastair Roberts on The Ecological Effect of Technology
• John Dyer's From The Garden To The City