A community for sharing those miniature epiphanies you have that highlight the oddities within the familiar.
Of course. I would say most times.
It would be trivial to include a full body hot hair blower to dry ourselves after a shower, but why bother when you have towels?
The vast majority of "labour-saving" kitchen gadgets rarely last a generation. Eg: electric carving knives were huge in the 70s/80s.
Don't give your power company access to your thermostat and you don't have anything to worry about. These people willingly did this to get deals from their provider. It's not like they took control without asking.
Also, local open source systems such as Homeassistant exist. You can have smart stuff while keeping full control of your data and privacy. It just takes a bit more shopping around for devices which don't "phone home" or ones you can hack with custom firmware (Tasmota, ESPHome)