Humans And Home Assistants: Life With A Google Home

In 4th grade, we had to read Ray Bradbury’s short story “When the Soft Rains Came.” It tells the story of a smart house tucked in a typical suburban neighborhood whose occupants had been obliterated by a nuclear war. The smart house stood strong, still trying to care for its inhabitants who were so far beyond help. Humanity had already destroyed itself, but the smart house still made breakfast, cleaned up the dishes, vacuumed, even read the mother’s favorite poetry, offering as best it could to be a good servant.

Eventually, a storm came and struck the house with lightning, causing a fire. The house fought to the bitter end, but with no humans left to help it, it too breathed its last mechanical breath, the symbiotic relationship of man and machine dying with it. The story was heart-rending to an imaginative 4th grader.

Ray Bradbury wrote extraordinarily ahead of his time. He described the future, our present-day, with astonishing accuracy. He dreamed of home assistant technology, flat-screen TVs, and even the Bluetooth earbud phenomena decades before the technology existed. What I found most fascinating was his writings about the delicate balance needed between assistant technology and the humanness of humanity. The Murderer, written in 1953, is hauntingly accurate of the modern dilemma of overconnectivity.

When I was in 4th grade, voice command was still science fiction. But as I grew up and began to see the fiction of Ray Bradbury become reality, I met it with the same wide-eyed fantasy of a 4th grader. I bought my Google home in about 2017. Google was offering a deal through eBay to get a Google Home and Google Mini kit for phenomenally cheap. At that time, Google was on the edge of the market, forging ahead into the medium of home assistance. The Google Home was the neural center, the brain, that you could then connect eyes and ears and heart and a stomach and hands to, purchased in pieces from different companies now boasting “Google Assistant compatible!” Lightbulbs. Security cameras. Door locks. Vacuum cleaners. Kettles. Fridges. The possibilities were seemingly endless and ever-growing. For my house with my sister, we stuck to just the Google Home, Google Minis, and Philips Hue lights.

The only trouble with technology in the real world, not in Ray Bradbury’s fantasies, is that humans have to learn the software with more intentionality than it learns them. The home in When the Soft Rains Came knew the family’s schedule, their favorite breakfast, favorite poetry, the time they like to relax, and the time they’re off at work and school. What wasn’t shown in the story was the father entering their daily schedule into the calendar interface. Or the mother throwing out burnt toast after she forgot to enter the stop toaster command.

The Home took some getting used to. There were lots of “I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” or “I don’t have that function yet” responses. Every time I tried to push Google’s limits, it pushed me back to the standard commands instead.
One of Google’s boasts was that it could map your voice and tell which home member was talking, which I’m sure worked perfectly in a home with a man and woman and children’s voices. What it didn’t account for was two sisters with nearly identical voices living together. Sometimes our own family can’t tell our voices apart, so Google was at a complete loss. That meant any personalized features like “play music in my bedroom” had to be phrased as “Lori’s bedroom”. It felt pretentious to refer to myself in the third person when addressing my automated servant, but such was life with Google, and I learned to bend my will to its idiosyncrasies.

Despite the bumpy road to learning Google’s command structure, I never lost my wonder at the magicianry of electronic assistance. Every time I walked into a dark room and commanded the lights, I felt like God in Creation. Every timer I set for cookies in the oven, I imagined Google as a tiny butler, coughing politely to let me know my cookies were about to burn unless I turned my attention to them. Best of all was the speaker system sprinkled throughout the house for parties. I grew a love for creating playlists for every occasion, from a Halloween rave to a Saturday morning brunch. The speaker system of Google Homes allowed you to have the volume loudest by the dance floor but play quietly even in the bathroom so the guests are never disconnected or missing out on the party atmosphere. It was a piéce de resistance.

After a few years, when I moved out of the house with my sister, we split up our Google Home kits as well. I took the Home and Mini I had bought originally, and the starter kit of lights, and left her with all the additions of Google Max and Google Minis and colored lights she had added over the years.

Things settled for a while and I almost forgot the wonder of having a Google butler, until I watched my husband John interact with it.
At first, he simply rubbed his head and said “Americans…” But I finally converted him to easy living and he gave it a try. It was more complicated than I expected.
Google didn’t account for an African accent in an American home. And John didn’t account for Google.
The first problem came in John remembering the wake word. Not having studied Google Home specs like they were a treasure map, it was tricky to remember that even though it’s always listening, Google will only respond to “Okay Google” or “Hey Google.”
John would start with “Google.” Then a polite “Hello, Google.”
No response.
“Yes, Google? Google! Alright, Google.” It was like a phone with a bad connection. Google was determined not to respond without the magic phrase, and John was using every combination of its name he could think of.
The next problem was Google understanding John. Most often, John would be trying to brew our morning coffee and needed to set a 4-minute timer for the French press.
“Hey Google, set up a 4-minute timer.”
“Setting a 40-minute timer.”
To John’s credit, he never argued with Google. He just watched the clock for 4 minutes instead. And 40 minutes later, he turned off the useless timer.

At one point, it seemed that John and Google had reached a sort of non-aggression pact. John understood he had to use “Okay Google” and Google understood “Set up a 4-minute timer” with an African accent. And that’s about all they used each other for.

Slowly, John acclimated to more smart home technology. He appreciated the dimmable smart bulb for his desk lamp. It changed the atmosphere of his study to inviting rather than blinding. But he was still somewhat hesitant to use Google’s voice command, probably because of the rocky start they had. Sometimes he would ask me something so I could ask Google. For an African village boy like my husband, wife command was easier than artificial intelligence command.

John and I may never become the couple from When the Soft Rains Came, living in a house that took care of them so carefully and faithfully. There are glitches and misunderstandings and sometimes it’s just easier to do something on your own. But in general, I feel much more like that couple than like other science fiction stories depicting assistant technology taking over our world. Our Google Home sits quietly waiting for us to need it and doesn’t demand our attention or require our response to notifications. It’s just a convenient piece of the future waiting for us to call its name.