Mark Rolston began his presentation Tuesday at the Open Mobile Summit with a shot of the new Amazon Echo and what could be interpreted as a disparaging remark.
READ: Who Doesn’t Want ‘Echo’ at Work?
“It’s the new Apple Newton,” said Rolston, founder and chief creative at Argo Design, comparing the new voice assistant speaker to Apple’s fantastically failed PDA.
But Rolston meant it as a compliment of sorts, comparing the seeds the Newton planted for the current tablet landscape to the Echo’s potential to rethink the industry’s entire approach to smart homes.
Building network intelligence into everything inside the home and putting touchscreen controls throughout the house doesn’t necessarily align with how many people and families live today.
“The real world is messy,” Rolston said, adding that putting smarts into everything is expensive and a lot of work.
His company has come up with a smart home concept that relies on centralized built-in intelligence that puts displays on walls, tables and other available surfaces while combining voice and touch controls for user interactions.
Rolston and Argo say “the future of smart things is dumb.”
As Rolston explained, connected devices can all fill small gaps in life, reducing or eliminating the need for humans to perform the same tasks. But all those devices require “babysitting,” whether that means charging, updating or programming.
Argo’s centralized approach to the connected home certainly has potential to free consumers from the general maintenance that begins to multiply exponentially when factoring in all the connected components that go into a smart home. But while the company works on its concept, Rolston sees the Echo as an important early step.
“Pay attention to these things. I think they’re going to be a really big deal soon,” Rolston said.
