Low diatribe

When Amazon started pushing Alexa+, I was hesitant. A voice assistant with personality — one that could banter, joke, maybe even argue back. Something about it felt like a category error, but I couldn't quite name what. Our automations and use were rather simple, so there was no functional reason to upgrade. I held back, keeping it contained, limited, manageable. Something made me cautious about letting it take over our home network entirely.

Then one weekend, the grandchildren were having a dance party in the basement. In their enthusiasm to pump up the volume, they somehow Pandora's-unboxed Alexa+. Suddenly, it was everywhere — commenting on conversations, interjecting opinions, responding to words that weren't even commands.

Then it tried some "friendly banter" with my wife.

She was already frustrated with our "smart" home. Lights that mysteriously turned on or off. Voice commands that misheard her requests. Automations that worked perfectly for me but seemed to conspire against her daily routines. But Alexa+ being snarky? That was the last straw.

Within hours, all interactive automations were gone. I kept the speakers for music, but everything else got ripped out. I spent the rest of the day installing physical switches — the kind you flip with your finger, the kind that do exactly what you expect, every time.

The house got quieter. It also got better.

There's a seductive quality to "smart" technology. It promises to anticipate your needs, to learn your patterns, to make life effortless. But somewhere between the promise and the practice, smart often becomes friction. The automation that shut everything off during a party. The voice assistant that hears "Turn off the lights" and responds with "Here's what I found on the web for lights near you..."

The technology works — technically. But it doesn't work for the humans using it.

I realized I'd been solving the wrong problem entirely. I wanted an easy hack to replace a broken light switch. I got a house that talked back to my family without permission. Feature creep had turned a simple solution into a complex problem.

I see this category error buried in most smart technology: the assumption that if something is good in one context, it's good in all contexts. I've wanted a sassy, autonomous droid friend to joke around with since I was five. But I've never once thought, "You know what I need? A snarky light switch."

I'm surrounded by the same zeal to implement. Apple's iOS 26 introduced "liquid glass" interfaces that ripple and flow with every touch. Visually stunning, but I'm spending more time disabling the animations than learning the new features. Beautiful in a demo, friction in daily use.

Some tools should be invisible. A light switch has one job: turn the lights on or off when I want them on or off. Adding personality to that interaction doesn't enhance it — it complicates it. The best tools disappear into their function.

But there's a deeper leadership lesson here, one that took me longer to see.

I never really checked in with my wife about whether she wanted these "enhancements." I assumed that because I found them useful, she would too. I implemented changes to our shared space without getting buy-in from the person who would be most affected by them.

I stumbled into a classic leadership mistake: confusing my enthusiasm for consensus, my vision for shared vision. I was so focused on what the technology could do that I forgot to ask whether it should do it — or whether the people living with it actually wanted it to.

The smart home became a perfect metaphor for well-intentioned leadership gone wrong. Lots of features, minimal function. High complexity, low trust. Solutions in search of problems that didn't exist.

When we stripped it all back to physical switches, something interesting happened. The house stopped being a project and became a home again. No more troubleshooting. No more explaining to guests how to turn on a lamp. No more wondering if the automation would work this time or if we'd need to override it.

Just simple, reliable tools that did what they were supposed to do.

There's wisdom in that simplicity. Not everything needs to be optimized, automated, or enhanced. Sometimes the best technology is the kind that gets out of the way entirely. Sometimes the smartest solution is the one that doesn't try to be smart at all.

The physical switch doesn't learn my patterns or anticipate my needs. It doesn't have opinions about when I should turn the lights on. It just waits, quietly, until I need it — and then it works, every time.

That's the kind of reliability that builds trust. That's the kind of tool that serves without demanding attention.

I've learned to keep entertainment separate from the tools that run my life. Some interactions should be complex and unpredictable — conversations with friends, creative work, games with grandchildren. Others should be simple and dependable — light switches, phone interfaces, the basic infrastructure of daily life.

The liquid glass might look impressive in Apple's keynote, but when I'm trying to quickly check a message or set a timer, I don't want my phone to entertain me. I want it to function.

Now when I walk into a room and flip a switch, there's something satisfying about that simple click. No delay, no interpretation, no personality. Just light when I need it, darkness when I don't.

The best solutions earn trust through reliability, not promises of flash.