This is a very myopic view. Technology needs to advance in all fronts. Once these things are integrated as part of your daily life you wont notice them anymore and will take them for granted.
These things will actually end up conserving energy in great amounts.
> This is a very myopic view. Technology needs to advance in all fronts
Citation, please.
Or at least a clarification of what you mean by "advance."
If you like, here's an example from writer Wendell Berry:
"To make myself as plain as I can, I should give my standards for technological innovation in my own work. They are as follows:
1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships."
(I don't expect everyone would necessarily share all these standards -- I suspect 10 in particular might be an issue for HN participants, for example --but they serve as an example and all of them have some merit.)
Your list of requirements for technological innovation is somewhat suspect considering you're discussing it via a tremendously expensive international network of computers, which is mostly powered by coal-generated electricity, who you likely paid a multinational telecommunications company to access.
It appears that you're being downvoted, but I've found Wendell Berry to be one of the most insightful writers about the weaknesses of technological advances, despite the fact that he doesn't use a computer. Reading his essays would be worth the time of a lot of young programmers, if only to learn why old people scowl at their newfangled gizmos.
"But what could someone who never uses a computer know about computers!?!" They could know what is lost when you use a computer, and, in general, you can't get that perspective from the Hacker News crowd (or nearly anyone under 30 or so). I don't agree with everything he writes (especially not the religious stuff), but he's very wise, I think.
If intrigued, one might try "The Unsettling of America" (1977), "What Are People For?" (1990) or "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community" (1993).
That list of standards is ridiculously unreasonable and unrealistic. If we had consistently followed them, we'd still be arguing about whether to start banging the rocks together. Anything as daring as the printing press or electricity would be utterly unthinkable.
I don't know whether home automation will take off, but I think the deciding factor will be the same as it was with most of the other things we've invented since we came down from the trees: whether the benefits on the whole exceed the costs.
Well, that was largely the state of affairs for computers for a while: From 1998–2007, I could reasonably expect 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 with respect to both desktops and laptops.
We do seem to have regressed because of the phenomena of “worse hardware through software”, and the over-dependence on cloud services.
I'm also much more skeptical that software version n is unambiguously better than version n-1, having been burned a few too many times (that's also why sites like this exists: http://www.oldversion.com/).
3 and 9 do not contradict, they just aren't universally consistent.
Something that achieves 3 without sacrificing 9 is probably better (or at least more likely to be adopted) than something that achieves 3 but sacrifices 9.
3 doesn't require that the thing replaced be good. So both 3 and 9 allow you to replace something bad with something good. I only claimed that there are examples where you can satisfy 3 and 9, not that you can always satisfy 3 and 9.
But also, I think this thread entirely misses the point and intended use-case for this list.
When you cannot satisfy all criteria, the list does not become a justification for the status quo. Instead, it is a useful mechanism for elucidating the exact conflicts which a good designer must reason through and ultimately resolve (perhaps even leading to an alternative, "win-win" or "win-less lose" solution. Or not. Either way, the list helped think things through.)
How is technology not an aspect of people's lives? Not to mention, some aspects of people's lives might be good, but could be better. Should they not be improved? Well, not according to 9.
But this isn't really a huge leap in technology. It's existing technology being supported by Apple. It makes adoption more likely, but still far from guaranteed.
The problem is, people have been saying that about HA for the last 20 years. Home Automation has a long history of not being able to generate a large enough market.
These things will actually end up conserving energy in great amounts.