Published on January 5, 2017

There was once a time when relaxing on the couch and clicking through channels was not possible. My father uses to remind me almost daily of the taxing annoyance having to get up to change the channel of his box TV with about 12 channels total. I would roll my eyes and click away with a slight sarcastic grin on my face.

Fast forward and I see my nine-year-old daughter doing the same thing to me. She clears her throat and begins speaking in a relatively loud voice... “Alexa, I want to watch the first season of Descendants.” Alexa, the smart device from Amazon, had activated Amazon Prime and turned on my daughter’s favorite TV show. 

“Clicking and using the remote is so old-school,” my daughter said to me while rolling her eyes. I closed my gapping mouth, tossed aside the remote and walked out of the living room.

It got me thinking....that my house is becoming smarter while I seem to struggle keeping up with my daughter’s favorite shows. For some these smart houses are making their residents dumber and lazy. As awesome and convenient it is to set up one’s house to be “smart” and advanced, what is it honestly doing to our minds? 

“In November 2012, Stanford University School of Medicine researcher Gerald Crabtree published two papers in the journal Trends in Genetics suggesting that humanity's intelligence peaked between 2,000 and 6,000 years ago. 

Crabtree based this assertion on genetics. About 2,000 to 5,000 genes control human intelligence, he estimated. At the rate at which genetic mutations accumulate, Crabtree calculated that within the last 3,000 years, all of the humanity has sustained at least two mutations harmful to these intellect-determining genes (and will sustain a couple more in another 3,000 years). Not every mutation will cause harm - genes come in pairs, and some weaknesses caused by mutation can be covered for by the healthy half of the pair, Crabtree wrote; but the calculation suggests that intelligence is more fragile than it seems.

Furthermore, he argued, intelligence isn't as evolutionarily important to humans today as it was when the species were hunter-gatherers. Thousands of years ago, failing to grasp the aerodynamics of throwing a spear when a lion was coming at you meant you were toast - no more passing along your genes to offspring. Modern man rarely faces such life-or-death tests of wits, Crabtree wrote.

To look back at historical intelligence, the researchers turned not to IQ tests, but to reaction time. Simple reaction time (the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus) is correlated with IQ, Woodley said, and not nearly as sensitive to cultural influences as IQ tests." [ Cited here ]

It seems that in a short period of time, cyborgs, robots, and smart houses will be taking over the planet. It is not as if there are no benefits to having a home help you the way Alexa helps mine, but it comes into question the mental benefit or detriment it might cause to my IQ.

Some pros to having a smart home could be financially smart savvy. It could be a huge money saver. It could minimize damages that would otherwise go unseen unless pointed out by these smart detectors and objects throughout the house. It could lower your energy bills by allowing you to control the temp no matter where you’re at. BUT a major con would be the possible security threat. 

There have been several cases of cyber threats and hacking through these smart devices. Even baby monitors have been known to have people hack into to see and communicate with your sleeping child. 

Until the industry standards for security on these smart devices have been put in place, turning my home into one big smart house will be on the back burner. Sometimes the best-assured safety precaution is through your own physical and mental self and keeping to some of the human physical actions instead of turning them all “smart” just yet.....

Shaunna Kaufmann