Every once in a while I bump into one of Logitech’s unholly offspring.

Last time was when I discovered that Wired gave 8 of 10 to the hideous Harmony One universal remote control. This kind of device is the ultimate  symptom of a grave illness that plagues most of our home appliances: the feature cancer.

I won’t argue about the value of the device in itself. Maybe it is not that bad after all… But, besides its ugliness, what’s interesting is the failed narrative that supports its inception.

The narrative is: cram all your remote controls in a single big one, and become the master of the living room, yeah! This narrative fails because 1° the thing is a monster of complexity, 2° the thing is always hidden behind a sofa’s cushion like a vulgar non-universal remote control, and 3° because the devices you are supposed to control are themselves suffering from feature cancer, so you’re still trapped.

We have basically swapped a broken system for another one with very questionable gains. The universal remote control concept is an inefficient plaster on an open wound.

As always, the solution will come from a change of narrative. I can suggest this one:

“Get a standard interface to link and access any devices at home”

Thus any devices becomes a member of a system. Our new gizmo, let’s call it Logitech Bridge, will serve features and actions (like “listen to music in room X”, “view Channel Z on screen Y, etc.); to any, say, WiFi or Bluetooth enabled device that will become de-facto universal remote controls.

Maybe Logitech could built this “Bridge” and set a standard for home devices communication via WiFi or Bluetooth, WiFi would be better of course.

Because there is no standard protocol used by home devices (to my knowledge anyway), here is how one may envision a way to make the Bridge a reality:

Step 1: device recognition. The Bridge has a list of all current remote controls on the market. The list is updated live through the internet. Once the Bridge is installed, the user presents all his remote controls to the Bridge. He presses a few buttons, which is enough for the Bridge to recognize the device’s signature and activate its features.

Step 2: operation. The Bridge hosts its own protocol and interface to represent and link togeteher devices and features. This interface is a standard web service usable from any web capable device (computer, smart phones, whatever gadget to come). The user can easily manipulate the devices and their features from any capable device; and the bridge relays user’s inputs back to the home devices using their primitive IR protocols.

Step 3: consecration. Constructors start producing devices compliant with the Bridge’s protocol. They stop appending ugly remote controls to their products (thus producing less crap to be dumped a few years later) and they concentrate on making usable and open products.

I assume that you will think of other narratives more powerfull than this one. That’s the beauty of narratives: you can have several equally valid and elegant narratives, and different interfaces to support them. But the first one who sets a strong narrative and a good interface to support it, will most of the time set a standard.

Sure thing is Logitech, and other universal remote controls constructors, are missing the point in assuming that a physical remote control is going to rule over the legion of remote controls that infest our homes. The solution lies in the metaphoric sphere.