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I think it's a false dichotomy. Supposedly the GP thinks that their smart home devices are already useful, so there is no need to consider whether they would be

I think it's a false dichotomy. Supposedly the GP thinks that their smart home devices are already useful, so there is no need to consider whether they would be more useful if more people had them. I think the quote from the article is a bit strange, and the example of clocks is not very good because people still had a way to tell time before clocks were invented (e.g. looking at the sun), it was just not very precise. A clock is still useful for a single person because that person now has a faster and more reliable way of telling the time without having to look out the window.

pm215 4y ago
Yes, but it's not as useful as it is to a modern person, because if you're the only person who owns a clock then your life will have very few situations where knowing the time exactly and reliably matters -- so you only own one if you have some specific use-case where you care about exact time. The benefit of owning a precise and accurate clock becomes much greater if you are frequently interacting with other people who also have precise and accurate clocks (such as operators of railways), and at the point where most people in a society have an accurate clock then it becomes a default assumption that scheduling can be done by time and you will find it increasingly difficult to be without one. (I think the smartphone is currently going through a similar transition -- right now it is definitely still possible to live without a smartphone, but an increasing number of organizations are now starting to act on the assumption that every person they deal with does have one.)
TeMPOraL 4y ago
I think the point of the analogy is that a clock isn't very useful for an individual, unless enough other people around you also have one. You don't gain much from being able to accurately tell the time down to minutes or seconds, because by far the biggest non-specialist use of clocks is synchronizing with other people. You'll come by the store at 08:00 sharp, and discover it's closed, because the day is cloudy and the storeowner's rooster overslept, so he still thinks it's early. Such fundamental technologies have also a perverse tipping point, a kind of strong network effect in disguise. Continuing with the analogy, once enough people have clocks and start coordinating with them, they'll start forcing their preference on others, and soon enough everyone has to get a clock, or else they won't be able to synchronize with the society around them. With timekeeping, this arguably happened before most of us were alive. But a more recent example, one that's being regularly lamented in bars and in press, is cellphones (and even more recently, smartphones): they went from a rich people's toy to being ubiquitous in ~decade, and these days there's a strong social expectation that you own one, and that through it, you're accessible during waking hours. People slightly older than I am call it an invisible chain/tether. Our children will probably call it "normal", just like my generation considers clocks normal.

pm215 4y ago

Yes, but it's not as useful as it is to a modern person, because if you're the only person who owns a clock then your life will have very few situations where knowing the time exactly and reliably matters -- so you only own one if you have some specific use-case where you care about exact time. The benefit of owning a precise and accurate clock becomes much greater if you are frequently interacting with other people who also have precise and accurate clocks (such as operators of railways), and at the point where most people in a society have an accurate clock then it becomes a default assumption that scheduling can be done by time and you will find it increasingly difficult to be without one. (I think the smartphone is currently going through a similar transition -- right now it is definitely still possible to live without a smartphone, but an increasing number of organizations are now starting to act on the assumption that every person they deal with does have one.)

TeMPOraL 4y ago

I think the point of the analogy is that a clock isn't very useful for an individual, unless enough other people around you also have one. You don't gain much from being able to accurately tell the time down to minutes or seconds, because by far the biggest non-specialist use of clocks is synchronizing with other people. You'll come by the store at 08:00 sharp, and discover it's closed, because the day is cloudy and the storeowner's rooster overslept, so he still thinks it's early. Such fundamental technologies have also a perverse tipping point, a kind of strong network effect in disguise. Continuing with the analogy, once enough people have clocks and start coordinating with them, they'll start forcing their preference on others, and soon enough everyone has to get a clock, or else they won't be able to synchronize with the society around them. With timekeeping, this arguably happened before most of us were alive. But a more recent example, one that's being regularly lamented in bars and in press, is cellphones (and even more recently, smartphones): they went from a rich people's toy to being ubiquitous in ~decade, and these days there's a strong social expectation that you own one, and that through it, you're accessible during waking hours. People slightly older than I am call it an invisible chain/tether. Our children will probably call it "normal", just like my generation considers clocks normal.