It's because advertisers have armies of psychologists and mountains of data they can use to pull your ear and put it right up against a loudspeaker telling you to purchase stupid stuff.

It's an arms race, and we measly individual consumers with real life concerns that don't center around defending our psyche from nonstop sensory ambush stand a very poor chance.

One word: convenience

I don't know what is convenient about a connected dishwasher. You still have to load the thing. Is pushing a physical start button that hard?

But it will tell you when it is done, same for a connected washer/dryer. Or a connected refrigerator that tells you when the filters are low or when you need to buy more eggs.

I think it is silly. You think it is silly, but people will buy this crap. They think apps will solve their problems.

They said we'd buy 3DTVs and such too, we didn't. The age of obsessing over appliance technology is over. They meet our basic needs and until they can save us massive amounts of time with more improvement the minimalist trend will continue and these will primarily be bought as designer item.

People with money to spend are choosing design, real estate (location over structure), experiences and food.

Yeah, but a lot of that stuff is already doable. It's just not telling you remotely. For instance, the filter light is on when you walk by the refrigerator or the dishwasher beeps and shows an indicator when it's done.

It's really more than sufficient to me. In fact, with everything else I have going on, I don't need my refrigerator texting me whenever it thinks it deserves my attention. That would actually be inconvenient.

Then, there's this hidden cost of the purported "convenience". More stuff updating, hacked etc. And, with the thousand other devices, now I have to spend time configuring what I want to manage, etc.

Reminds me of something I read years ago about the hidden costs of some tech. In one anecdote, subway riders were excited when A/C was installed on the train. Now, they could ride in comfort. What they didn't realize was the A/C exhaust heated the platform another 10 degrees or so, and they were actually less comfortable while waiting.

Oh great, so my dishwasher can flood my kitchen and my network. Woohoo!