Are You Smarter Than Your Smart Home?

For most of human history, a smart home quiz would have been pointless. A person wishing to turn on a light simply walked across the room and flipped a switch. The procedure required no password, software update, Bluetooth connection, privacy agreement, or email welcoming him to the exciting world of illumination.

Those primitive days are weg. The modern smart home contains thermostats that study your behavior, refrigerators that monitor your groceries, doorbells that recognize people, and toilets that have begun collecting information nobody remembers asking them to collect.

All this technology supposedly makes life easier. The evidence for this consists largely of advertisements produced by the companies hawking  the technology.

A smart-home owner can now adjust the temperature in his bedroom while vacationing in Portugal. Unfortunately, when he is actually standing in the bedroom, the thermostat may refuse to cooperate because it has detected an “energy-saving opportunity.”

Meanwhile, every household appliance has acquired an app. The washing machine sends notifications. The refrigerator has Wi-Fi. The vacuum cleaner has mapped the premises. Your front door has a camera.

Consequently, The Pug Bus has prepared the following smart home quiz to determine whether you are still the master of your household or merely the largest unsecured device in it.

1. A smart thermostat differs from an ordinary thermostat because . . . a) it can learn your heating and cooling habits . . . b) it can be controlled remotely . . . c) after six weeks it develops a theory about why your marriage failed . . . d) it has already lowered the temperature to 64 and would prefer not to discuss it.
   
2. Your smart refrigerator sends an alert informing you that its door has been left open. You should . . . a) close the refrigerator door . . . b) thank the refrigerator and ask whether there is anything else . . . c) appoint a household committee to determine how this breach occurred . . . d) change the refrigerator password before somebody in Bulgaria orders 40 pounds of municipal cheese.
   
3. Before a smart light bulb can illuminate your bedroom, you may be required to . . . a) install an app . . . b) connect the bulb to Wi-Fi . . . c) verify your identity by selecting three traffic lights in photographs of Moldova . . . d) spend the remainder of the evening reading beside an open refrigerator.
   
4. A firmware update for your doorbell is . . . a) an improvement to the software controlling the device . . . b) 47 minutes during which nobody may approach your front door . . . c) necessary because the previous doorbell firmware had become emotionally unstable . . . d) why the Amish continue to sleep pretty well.
   
5. Your smart speaker fails to understand “turn on the kitchen light” three times but activates when you casually mention Saskatchewan. This means . . . a) the microphone may have misunderstood you . . . b) Saskatchewan is now connected to Bedroom Lamp 2 . . . c) a family in Regina has just lost power . . . d) you should avoid saying “Manitoba” until an electrician arrives.
   
6. A smart toilet can monitor certain information related to its user’s health. This represents . . . a) an promising area of health technology . . . b) another potential source of personal data leaks . . . c) the first toilet in history to maintain a dossier . . . d) the precise moment when “none of your damn business” became a bathroom setting.

SCORING: There are no wrong answers. There are only devices awaiting further instructions.

Give yourself one point for every answer you understood and two points if you knew where the corresponding appliance was located.

If you scored 10 or higher, congratulations. You are fully prepared for the smart home of the future. If you scored below 10, walk across the room and flip a switch while you still remember how.

There are no right or wrong answers and no penalties for guessing at The Pug Bus Quiz.