A “fully immersive experience”

I always keep at least a half-opened eye on what’s happening at CES – the consumer technology show that takes place in Las Vegas each January. It’s a geek’s delight: a great combination of cool, interesting, breakthrough, useless, and weird. (Not that I can tell the breakthrough from the useless, the cool from the just plain weird…)

Anyone, Kohler – the plumbing folks – used the CES opportunity to promote their Numi 2.0 Intelligent Toilet.

Numi, Kohler’s most advanced intelligent toilet, offers exceptional water efficiency, personalized cleansing and dryer functions, a heated seat, and high-quality built-in speakers. The lighting features on Kohler’s flagship intelligent toilet have been upgraded from static colors to dynamic and interactive multi-colored ambient and surround lighting. Paired with the new speakers in the Numi toilet, these lighting and audio enhancements create a fully-immersive experience for homeowners. Amazon Alexa built into the product provides simple voice control of Numi’s features and access to tens of thousands of skills, as well as a seamless integration of voice control into the bathroom. (Source: Business Wire – Kohler press release)

Where to begin?

Oh, I know.

How about the price: $7,000 in white; $9,000 in black.

Then there’s the very notion of an intelligent toilet to begin with.

Personally, I don’t need my toilet to be all that intelligent. I just need it to work.

And I don’t need to tell Alexa to flush it. That I can do on my very own. Or – if it’s the middle of the night and all I did was pee – not.

But at least I can see why being able to get Alexa to flush a toilet has a purpose as assistive technology, although it seems that someone who needed help flushing likely needs other help getting on and off the pot.

But the other features?

…personalized cleansing and dryer functions, a heated seat, and high-quality built-in speakers.

Cleansing and dryer functions? This doubles as a high-tech bidet? Me, the thought of the same device that scoots my waste matter away would be used to also clean me up after. Ahh, no.

I like heated seats in cars, but it’s not as if one is traipsing out to an outhouse on a wintry night. Sure, if by some fluke, i.e., the man in your life leaves the seat up – which rarely if ever happens -  you end up sitting directly on the porcelain, the cold can be a startling experience. But that’s what regular old non-heated seats are for: to protect us from sitting directly on icy cold porcelain.

Maybe the Numi 2.0 can be programmed to always makes sure that the seat returns to its downright position, which would be a benefit.

One feature I really don’t get is built in speakers. I guess you need them to talk to Alexa. But do you need your toilet to play music for you? Music when you’re lolling in the tub I get. Music to empty your bladder and move your bowels by? Not so much.

I suppose you can also get Alexa to make a phone call for you, but I really don’t like the idea of having a conversation with someone who’s sitting on the pot. No thanks.

The lighting feature, however, is the one that I find the oddest and least useful.

Numi 1.0 had colors. But they were boring. Numi 2.0 is:

…upgraded from static colors to dynamic and interactive multi-colored ambient and surround lighting.

Whatever happened to catching up with your New Yorkers and humming to yourself? Reading light is key in a bathroom, but “multi-colored ambient surround lighting”? To get you in the mood? Mood for what, exactly? Guess it goes with the mood music you’ve summoned up.

Kohler does look like they’re having some fun with their super-toilet, touting it as “a fully immersive experience.”

This is the phrase that a lot of the coverage has picked up on. Because who wants their toilet to be a fully immersive experience? No one, that’s who.

Your bathtub, yep. But your toilet? Just the thought of being immersed in your toilet? Yuck!

Anyway, I’m guessing that Kohler was quite deliberate in their wording choice. Just any old intelligent toilet might not grab all that much attention. Not when everything’s gotten so damned smart: refrigerators that send you a text telling you to get milk, dryers that sense when the clothing is dry and stop the drying – or, in the case of the smarty-pants dryer in our laundry room, when the clothing is damp, leaving you with pants that the smarty-pants dryer thinks are done. Etc.

An intelligent toilet? Just another household intelligent something-or-other. Ho, hum.

However, if you can insert a few ridiculous words, well, we’ll all sit up and take notice. 

If it weren’t for that “fully immersive experience”, which I saw in a couple of tweets, I might have given the Numi 2.0 a pass.

There’s an awful lot of intelligence out there, but do we really need it in our toilets?

Toilets have been plenty smart enough over the years.

They’ve spared us from chamber pots, from outhouses, from cholera.

That’s intelligent enough for me. I don’t need ambient lighting, mood music, or an immersive bathroom experience, thank you.