Not old enough. I live in a house with a dumbwaiter so late night snacks can easily be sent back to the kitchen with a click of a button.

Other things that were great, and I now miss---vaccum tubes in offices. Sure you don't need them to send messages, but if you want to send anything physical, however small, now you have to walk.

Oh and I certainly miss the bell system, where you could stand in the living room and ring a bell in any room in the house to tell the occupants that dinner was ready.

So what you are saying is you prefer a dumbwaiter over a smart home.

I have to agree with the grandparent -- intercoms were quite common in houses in the 60's and 70's. Then they fell out of fashion, possibly because of cordless phones?

Most multi-handset cordless phones have a built-in intercom that will ring all the other handsets and establish a loopback call. But I bet not many people even have those any more ...

So, I would say this is not so much new as retro. True old-timers would recognize this use case right away.

My house in Japan has an intercom system that connects to the front doorbell camera and the shower water temp control panel. There are portable audio/video monitors that you can use to speak to any of these nodes. This is pretty common in new homes here.