"Smart" is the new "e" and "i"

Remember my post 7 years ago about the vogue-ness of using in-letters to start words?  Apparently my prediction was wrong, just flat out wrong.  I was thinking linearly, like what's the next letter, when I should have been thinking off the curve - what's the next word?  And that word has become "smart" - as in smart watch, smart phone, smart office (yes I actually just read that in an actual, published article).  For crying out loud, PLEASE let's stop using that!  It is way NOT smart.

First of all, calling something smart just because it has a processor on it is a labeling gimmick just like e and i (see above article).  They aren't smart - because if they were actually able to have artificial intelligence, that would scare the (smart) pants off me!  So something has a chip on it and some firmware that lets it take input and alter its behavior.

Second, is it really smart to be covering our lives in computing hardware?  This Internet of Things (or IoT), processors in our speakers, processors in our TVs, and more - this is ushering in, at the very least, an age of George Orwell's 1984, where it is easy for the government, hackers, or what have you to spy on every aspect of your private life.  And that's the least of it.  At worst, with machine learning and AI come self-awareness and then self-preservation, and I tell you, machines will enslave humanity - and we will willingly give in to them.

So the big fad today is smart this and smart that.  And the common theme in product marketing is to call things like they aren't (sound like 1984??).  As in, not smart is called smart.

Aw man, am I just a weirdo shouting into the wind?