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It's interesting; AFAICT "smart" in relation to consumer electronics has seemingly never been used for any other meaning than "is connected to the Internet, ena
by derefr 5y ago
It's interesting; AFAICT "smart" in relation to consumer electronics has seemingly never been used for any other meaning than "is connected to the Internet, enabling some cloud service to manage it, and for you to interact with it through that cloud service."
Meanwhile, if you want to express the idea "a device that uses local sensors + local processing to attempt to optimize for property a human configured it to optimize for", you don't call the device smart — you call it intelligent.
- mkl 5y agoSure it has. Here's one brand that's used "smart" for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_%26_Paykel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_%26_Paykel
- derefr 5y agoThat brand is seemingly trying to use "Smart[X]" or "[X]Smart" as trademarked jargon terms referring to specific features its products have. This is different in kind from generic common-language use of the word "smart" by consumers as an adjective attached to product categories ("smart fridge", "smart home", etc.), which is what I was referring to. Even in the 80s, the X10 "smart home" automation technology was all about networking the devices in your home together to put them under control of a central hub; not about any active "intelligence" per se. A thermostat has always been an example of "device intelligence", but has never been called "smart" technology... until recently, as there are now "smart" thermostats (like Nest.) But these are another Internet-of-Shit product, and that — not any clever behavior — is what makes it a "smart" device.