A Hackable Dryer
I'm not a techno-optimist. I do think technology can solve problems and make the world a better place and so on (just look at how many different kinds of foods we can eat), but at the same time, I don't think technology will be used to a maximum or think that the new tech that's coming out is necessarily "good".
One side effect that's rarely mentioned is that technology means more attack vectors -- as my friend Kostas noticed, "Wow, my dryer just got more hackable." Thus, before I try to buy new technological advancements and such, I try to weigh the benefits of the new 'smart' technology to the expenses of the 'smart' technologies -- the maintenance, the hackability, the fact that it uses up my Wifi network potentially, and the data-scraping capabilities. As a result, for me, I don't need or want my dryer and washer and fridge to be smart -- I'm fine with manually loading my dishes and setting a timer and setting the temperature rather than automating such a simple task but exposing myself to being hacked pretty damn easily1.
The other thing about all this new technology is that not all technology is good; a lot of companies and products are over-valued (in my view) as the only thing that's pushing them is minimal code or functionality over a guise of advertising and hype. Unfortunately, that kind of means I ignore most of the tech products and inevitably, there are some good products that I miss (flipper zero looks cool). For some, this is detrimental; they would rather follow the hype and weed out everything constantly than miss out. For me however, I'm fine with missing a trend or two or five so I can use my time wherever else.
Ultimately, beware of the tech side effects. Hype is cool and products are cool but with more products and more integration and more dependencies, an exponential number of things can cause your whole process (whether this be your dryer or Google home) to go wrong, despite how unlikely it can be2. Moreover, with so many dependencies, your dryer is now in an unlikely position of being more hackable than ever.
Just be aware of that :>
It should also be noted that hacking things is super duper scalable. Compared to robbery for example, robbery is time-consuming; you gotta go from house to house, and the robber has to both be alert and can't be tired. In contrast, web hacking doesn't need that much; setup a server, and it can automatically send millions of requests. The server doesn't get tired, there's no need to hide (servers are low-cost and easy to set up), and as a result, the idea that "I won't get hacked because it's unlikely" is flawed.↩
Also, even with all this smart technology, remember that smart technology isn't smart on its own -- you have to use it in a smart way.↩