Do We Really Need Home Robots?
7th June 2025
Do we really need fewer routines and more excuses to sit and stare at our computers while machines do even more work for us?
Count me among the skeptics. We have been replacing household routines with machines for a century. Some have merit because the manual way is too arduous. I would rather have a vacuum cleaner than beat out rugs, even if the latter method is better in the long run. Same with dishwashers and washing machines. I get that they save time.
But there comes a point when it is all too much. The trigger for me was the “smart” lightbulb. That’s where I drew the line. I would rather stand up and turn it off and on than become nothing but a couch potato with a smartphone. There are reasons perhaps for the ability to remotely manage household temperature, but if I were building today, I would look long and hard for analog over digital thermostats.
Need? No. Want? Almost certainly yes. The point this author ignores is that you can do things the Old Fashioned Way if you want to (sometimes the old ways are best) but you won’t need to. No one is forcing you to sit on the couch rather than getting up to turn off the light You’ll have the power to choose.
Yes, a portion of the population will choose to be ‘couch potatoes’ rather than Amish. That’s their choice. And that’s a choice that they ought to have.
But natural selection works. In a hundred years, we will know which method is ‘better’ – assuming that both don’t survive as being most appropriate for different types of people.