The Case against “The Internet of Things”

I’m a technowhore. I admit it, even though as time goes on, I’m becoming more resistant to things like FaceBook, Twitter, and all that stuff.  

When It comes to machines being smart I think it’s cool. At least I did…

Then I started adding up all the devices in the house that are updating all the time. You really don’t think about it until you’re trying to track down how 15GB of data can disappear in one day. Then you start counting up the devices and checking their auto-update settings.

I started, figuring that it would only take a minute or two, then had the sobering realization that I have a LOT of devices that connect to the internet.

Two Physical computers, one virtual machine. (3 Computers)

Two iPads, Two iPhones, Two Apple TVs, the Xbox (Which sits turned off most of the time), The DirectTV box, The Television, Two DVD players, A Nest Thermostat, Two Network Drives, and a Printer.

45 Minutes later I finished checking all the settings.

All these devices have the ability to grab software updates from the internet and it isn’t until you fire each one up to turn off the auto-update feature that you realize just how much data our technology can consume while we’re not looking.

Any of the devices that are multifunction computational devices (Computers, iPhones, iPads) will update the myriad applications we all load, in addition to their own Operating Systems. All of this happens even if you’re not using the applications.

How many of us have “forgotten” applications which are updating regularly on our computers, phones, or tablets? With services that have no real data-cap you don’t think about it. But when you’re trying to figure out where, how, or if, your’e hemorrhaging data, suddenly you tune into the minutiae.

Even though I’ve turned all the auto-updates off, I’m still at a loss as to what’s going on because all the logs say no update was greater than 500MB in the past 60 days. The grand total of data that I can account for is a little over 3GB.

Hughes has claimed that their premium plan is having problems because of a server migration. Well, that migration has been going on now for 4 weeks. I’ve come to believe there’s nothing wrong other than their service sucks diseased donkey balls. 

Since we’re now spending more time in the “Crippled” mode with Hughes than we are in the “working” mode I’ve decided that I’m not going to bother fighting a losing battle anymore. I told the other half that we were not going to keep playing the plug / unplug,  reconfigure your network game that Hughes keeps wanting to play each and every time we’re trying to get an answer to if they’ve fixed their premium plan.

I’m done, we’re downgrading Hughes to the absolute minimum and we’re just not going to stream anything. No video, no music and if I need to actually do something like real work or retrieving email I’ll head to a library, or Starbucks, or just use my phone hotspot. We’ll simply get used to and accept the crippled mode as “normal” much the way we accepted the shitty Verizon service as normal. (At least with Hughes we can actually control the amount we choose to spend on internet, unlike Verizon.) As soon as something else comes along that’s better we’ll drop Hughes like the steaming pile of elephant shit they are and move on with life.

This whole debacle points to another issue.

The more connected our devices become the more ISP’s will have an opportunity to screw us all. Unfortunately, that opportunity will be handed to them on a silver fucking platter by the FCC and the morons in Congress.

If these ISP’s manage to institute data caps, and then get away with crippling the service, or charging premium rates for each megabyte of data above some arbitrary limit, The Internet of things is going to become very expensive.

I think in the future I’ll be looking very carefully at what the machines I buy actually need. If the device can’t be started without an internet connection I’m going to pass on it. Eventually, I wont be able to avoid these devices but I’ll hold out as long as I can.

I’ve got an old flip cellphone around here somewhere… I wonder if I can get that puppy unlocked and go back to “StupidPhone”

I know I can put the IMEI number in a website somewhere and …

SHIT! I still need the damn internet even to “Go Stupid”