Back in the day I was chafing at the possibilities, but it was too expensive to integrate all of this automation into appliances and have a cost effective user interface. And, commodity home networking did not exist. Now, all of this is mostly a cheap trick. Unfortunately, manufacturers are not concerned about security and data about our use of everything is considered a profit center or some sort of government mandate.

There are lots of very useful applications. One that has always intrigued me is monitoring the performance of home systems. For example, if the outside temperature is 30°F and your thermostat calls for heat, it normally requires a certain amount of time for the house to come up to temperature. (one can track door openings and throw this into the equation) If this heat-up time begins to stretch out over time, there is a fault that needs to be investigated. A remote service company could track this and send a service tech around long before the system actually fails. Early maintenance could easily save money in fuel costs. System controlled drapes could take advantage of daytime sunlight and hold heat during dark hours. Further savings could be realized in cases where no one is home during the day and the system should be calling for heat, but it's a sunny day and in about an hour there will be enough sun energy to raise the temperature above the set set point. It would be a complete waste of fuel to bring the house up to the set point, only to have the sun cause overshoot in an hour.

Lack of security and all of the data mining is causing me to pause my vision.

Of course none of these negatives are necessary, they are the consequence of lazy, greed, and authority.