I read this story in 4th grade. It felt like the future. Now, it feels like most of the technology is within reach - at least, it could be built. The automated stove being the main exception.
But the most unrealistic part of this story is how all the IoT automation continues to work in the absence of the Internet.
> In the living room the voice-clock sang, Connecting to Brand(tm) servers... Connecting to Brand(tm) servers... Connecting to Brand(tm) servers...
The fridge dispensed a verification can.
Which of these apocalyptic landscapes contain traffic lights?
Minecraft Bedrock Edition (the one Microsoft most heavily pushes) uses a traffic light to show when you need to pay more money, I heard.
In the real 2026, the automated firefighting system wouldn't work - it would lose connection to the internet and fail to verify whether the customer is still enrolled in the Max Protection Pro subscription.
> But the most unrealistic part of this story is how all the IoT automation continues to work in the absence of the Internet.
It's actually one way this story about the apocalypse is more hopeful than the present day. We don't need the internet to make most of the things in that story work, but in our timeline we'd add it anyway to get and sell those good analytics.
Except that isn't really why it happened: iot being Internet tied is because it's much, much easier to get devices to work when you control at least one side of the server with skilled professionals rather then your average home user.
And no one has really come up with an alternative: home assistant is good, but it's not for the non-techy.
I will squarely blame IPv4 for some of this: NAT has meant that the key application people might want to use is broken by default (remote device access) without mediation servers.
> it's much, much easier to get devices to work when you control at least one side of the server with skilled professionals rather then your average home user.
No, practicality is not the main reason these unnecessary connections are added. The main reasons are 1. to sell and enforce subscriptions and 2. to collect and sell data.
Is it just easier to get your car seat warmers to work when they can connect to the internet and make sure you're paid up?
IoT works just fine with Zigbee that can be 100% local.
Most of which you don't need IMO. When a bunch of stuff had to be redone after a kitchen fire, I told my electrician that I wanted everything to be dumb.
Did IoT cause the fire?
No. A 15-year old (so not ancient) dumb microwave.
Not a luddite but, aside from a couple of Alexas, just no need for any IoT.
How did you start a fire with a microwave? Plain old electrical fire, rats eating wire insulation?
Apparently a short circuit in the control panel in the middle of the night. At least that's what the investigator said. I wasn't using it and was asleep. So I didn't start it. Was spontaneous. Didn't seem to be related to any external wiring.
The vision of the automated stove is partly fulfilled, at least around San Francisco, by the astounding number of people who get all their meals delivered, for the moment by humans but soon robots.
Still looking forward to the foodarackacycle.
Check out Home Assistant.
This. Not only does everything still work in an internet outage, mine actively detects and heals most internet outages by power cycling the modem with a smart plug.
We're closer to the stove, kind of. At least with things like Tovala. I've never actually met someone with one though.
I really wish we could just get a thermal imager integration for a stove which could catch a pot of boiling water about to boil over and back off the heat automatically.
Electric kettles have done this for decades. The tech is also in sous vide machines.
Best we can do is Wifi to set your timer.
The other unrealistic part is the absence of ads.