It’s time to let go of ‘smart’

What makes a product “smart”? According to the online etymology dictionary, a smart device gives the sense that it’s “behaving as though guided by intelligence.” The term was first used to describe laser-guided bombs during the Vietnam War. A smart bomb uses radio, infrared, lasers, or satellites to guide it, making it much more accurate than what are now referred to as unguided, or “dumb” bombs.

When it comes to consumer tech, the first popular mention of the term that many people in my generation remember came in the form of a brand name – Smart Automobile. Smart cars are those quirky miniature coupes driven round by Europeans. As they were extremely eco-friendly, smart also came to include advanced green technology.

In his first term, US President Barack Obama pledged to build a smart grid – a power network that would diagnose problems electronically, reroute power to reduce outages, and connect cities to wind turbines and solar farms for more sustainable energy.

Today, smart has come to describe any gadget that improves on its non-smart predecessor through connectivity, sensors, efficiency, or a combination of these. Adopted into the mainstream lexicon with the emergence of the first Palm smartphone and boosted by the more recent wearables and internet-of-things movements, the word now describes such a wide range of gadgets that it’s starting to lose its potency.

In some cases, it even sounds like a joke. Just here in Asia, we’ve seen smart water cups, smart table coasters, and smart seat cushions, and that’s only scratching the surface. Just look at how the term has spread from its western origins into the global buzzword it is today.

2004 (left) to 2014 (right) Google search volume comparison by region for the term “smart.”

Defining smart

The common denominators among these gadgets are typically Bluetooth or wifi connectivity, an accompanying mobile app, and some sort of electronic sensor. These components work in unison to gather data, transmit it to a phone, and display it to the user.

But is that really enough to consider an object “smart”? Does it really act in a way befitting of the basic meaning: “to behave as though guided by intelligence”? I would argue no, because most so-called smart gadgets today still work in a very linear way – they do not make decisions based on the data they’ve gathered, they merely collect and present it.

Wearables are among the worst perpetrators of this misnomer. A fitness band or movement tracker might gather enough data on the user’s habits to make suggestions, but never does it do anything in the realm of smart. The user is the one who has to walk more steps per day and correct his or her posture. A smart missile does not miss its target and tell the person who fired it “aim more to the left.” It reacts in real-time and makes decisions on its own.

Smart home and smart city technology is getting closer, but still isn’t quite there. A refrigerator that adjusts temperature based on the number of items in the fridge or stoplights that redirect traffic to avoid jams could be considered smart. Machine-to-machine communication is where the real smart advancements are being made today. Smart doesn’t mean fully-fledged artificial intelligence – just the ability to make a decision and adjust according to collected data.

Natural language selection

My gripes about the over-zealous use of the word aside, the issue will probably fix itself. When smart becomes the norm rather than the exception, we’ll all pretty much drop it from our vocabulary. We’ve already done so with the word “electric” and its distinct but often confused cousin “electronic.” When’s the last time you heard the phrase “electric washing machine” or “electric coffee maker”?

“Digital,” likewise, is nearing the end of its lifespan. We rarely describe cameras as digital anymore, as that is what cameras these days are assumed to be.

Smart will go through a similar phase – smartphones are already widely referred to as phones, and smart TVs will probably be next.

These terms won’t disappear entirely, however. Whenever a legacy product receives a disruptive update, they still apply. Electric vehicles and digital marketing, for example, are up-and-coming technologies prepended by such deprecated but not obsolete phrases. Smart still has gas left in the tank, but it’s starting to go out of style.

The question is, what will be the next buzzword used to describe the next generation of consumer technology? Let us know what you think in the comments.

This post It’s time to let go of ‘smart’ appeared first on Tech in Asia.

It’s time to let go of ‘smart’