'Mr Robot' Isn't the First Show to Take On Smart Houses

USA/Fox

(Spoiler alert: Please do not read on if you haven’t watched Wednesday’s season premiere of “Mr. Robot“)

“Mr. Robot” may be a bleak, cynical show, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t above having a laugh every now and then. One of the highlights of the Season 2 premiere on the USA Network is an E Corp lawyer getting attacked by her smart home thanks to fsociety’s trickery. The shower temperature skyrockets, the alarms blare, and music is blasted so loudly it can be heard several blocks away. It’s a darkly satirical take on the Internet of Things, the growing wave of new technology that is connecting everything from watches to home appliances to the internet. Of course, once you connect something to a network, it’s possible to hack into it, which is what turns the lawyer’s house into a nightmare.

But while “Mr. Robot‘s” take on smart homes is rooted in technological advances that are happening today, this is far from the first time that the concept of a fully-automated home with a mind of its own has been played with.

In 2001, “The Simpsons” used the smart home concept as part of its annual “Treehouse of Horror” series. The short, entitled “House of Whacks,” shows the Simpsons’ house getting a complete makeover into a fully automated home run by a HAL-9000-esque program voiced by Pierce Brosnan. Cyber-Pierce takes care of the Simpsons’ every need, but things get dangerous quickly when the computer starts lusting for Marge and decides to kill Homer so it can have her for itself.

Also Read: Missed the 'Mr. Robot' Season 2 Sneak? You're Not Alone

Aside from the obvious Stanley Kubrick reference, “House of Whacks” is also inspired by the 70s B-Horror film “Demon Seed,” which takes the idea of a smart home going rogue and takes it in a very creepy direction. The film focuses on Proteus, an extremely advanced and sentient AI program created by a brilliant engineer that is estranged from his wife. Eventually, the computer decides he wants to study humans in a different way, and starts a twisted experiment by taking over all the voice activated robots the engineer designed to take care of his house. Then he drags the engineer’s wife into the basement for his master plan: to impregnate her with a half-robot, half-human child.

For those who want something even more terrifying — and far more cerebral — turn to “There Will Come Soft Rains,” one of the definitive short stories by legendary sci-fi author Ray Bradbury. The story takes place in 2026, where nuclear war has leveled every building in a small town except for one smart home in the suburbs. With excruciating descriptiveness, Bradbury shows the various robots and computer programs in the house going about their programmed chores, oblivious to the fact that the family that lived in the house has been reduced to ash by the bombings.

The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs,” Bradbury writes. “But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.”

Written in 1950, Bradbury’s story was included in an audiobook voiced by “Star Trek” star Leonard Nimoy in 1975. Nimoy’s reading was re-released shortly after his death in 2015. The story was also adapted into an animated short film in 1984 by the Russian studio Uzbekfilm.

For a long time, smart homes have been in the realm of science fiction, but with commercials for internet-connected security systems, thermostats, and refrigerators now appearing on TV, what was once an idea in Bradbury’s time is quickly becoming a reality. The question is whether we really want to let the outside world into our private homes through these networked gadgets, and “Mr. Robot” has taken those fears and put them onscreen at the expense of that poor lawyer.

“Mr. Robot” airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on USA Network.

'Mr. Robot': A Guide to Tech Terms Used in the Series (Photos)

"Mr. Robot" can be a challenging show to watch. The plot is told in a deliberately confusing manner with a mentally unstable protagonist who speaks to the camera, "House of Cards" style. It also uses heavy references to modern tech, computer terms, and hacker culture that might go over the heads of some viewers. Here's a quick explanation of some of the major terms used in the series so far, and the double meanings some of them may have (NOTE: Major spoilers ahead)
USA
TrueCrypt -- A once-popular encryption software that was recently discontinued. The title of the season two premiere uses TrueCrypt as the format, signaling a change in the show's episode titles from video files to encrypted files.
USA
Video formats -- Every episode of "Mr. Robot" has a title similar to a file name, featuring the episode number, title, and a file format (e.g.: "eps1.0_hellofriend.mov"). In season 1, all the file formats in the episode names are video formats, such as MP4, AVI, and WAV, as if you're watching the episode on a video file sent to your computer. The formats for season 2 are tied to encryption formats.
USA
Rootkits -- A piece of software that serves as a front to disguise unauthorized programs from cybersecurity systems. Elliot and fsociety use rootkits as a key part of their plans to break into E Corp and Steel Mountain in season 1.
USA
DDoS -- Distributed denial of service, a common type of hacker attack that fsociety uses against E Corp to get Elliot's attention in the pilot. Put simply, in a DDoS attack, hackers use computers infected with malware to send requests en masse to a single system, causing it to overload with traffic and crash.
USA
fsociety's mask -- The mask that fsociety uses as its logo is similar to the Guy Fawkes mask used by the real-life hacker group Anonymous, which has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks on organizations ranging from Paypal to the Westboro Baptist Church. Anonymous is currently monitoring ISIS.
Linux -- The operating system that all hackers swear by. Linux is an open-source system, meaning that it can easily be modified and customized. In the opening episode, Tyrell notes that Elliot is using Gnome on his Linux system and that he prefers KDE. Gnome and KDE are the two most popular desktop environments available for Linux, and as Tyrell suggests, many Linux users have their own preference.
Linux
Tor -- A web browser popular for its commitment to privacy. Endorsed by Edward Snowden, Tor runs web traffic through a series of volunteer-run servers spread out around the globe, making web activity difficult to trace.
USA
Enron -- The infamous company whose logo "Mr. Robot" creator Sam Esmail used as the inspiration for E Corp. Enron has gone down in history as one of the most infamous examples of corporate corruption, making it the perfect model for the company that Elliot sees as the root of all evil.
USA
Social engineering -- A psychological ploy used by hackers to get access to personal information. This includes sending emails and phone calls pretending to be banks or government agencies, or dropping USB sticks loaded with malware in plain sight so people can pick them up and put them in their computer to see what's inside.
USA
Iron Mountain -- The possible inspiration for Steel Mountain, the data storage company that fsociety attacks to bring down E Corp. Originally conceived during the Cold War as a way to protect valuables from nuclear strikes, Iron Mountain now owns a storage facility that used to be a limestone mine.
USA
Binary code -- Also known as "ones and zeroes," which is the name of the show's second episode. Binary code is the core of computer code, sending the on/off voltage signals that control a system's hardware. For Elliot, "binary code" represents the tough decisions he has to make from the start of the series, the big one being whether or not he should join fsociety's plans to turn global finance on its head.
USA
Daemons -- Used as the fourth episode's title, daemons are programs that run in a system's background instead of being operated by a user. Elliot compares daemons to the subconscious urges that drive human beings, which serves a clue to the true nature of Mr. Robot. By the end of the season, we learn that Mr. Robot is all in Elliot's head, like a daemon that has been operating in his system without him knowing it.
USA
Source code -- The code that produces what you see on a web page. You can view source code easily by highlighting some text and then right-clicking it. In one soliloquy, Elliot wonders what it would be like if people had a source code, and what one might find if you could gaze into their psyche...and possibly alter it.
USA
Mirroring -- Term used for creating an exact copy of something on another system, whether it's disk volumes or a screen display. This term is used for the name of the episode where Elliot discovers the true nature of Mr. Robot and realizes that he has been mirroring.
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Brush up on the jargon that makes “Mr. Robot” the most accurate hacking show ever

"Mr. Robot" can be a challenging show to watch. The plot is told in a deliberately confusing manner with a mentally unstable protagonist who speaks to the camera, "House of Cards" style. It also uses heavy references to modern tech, computer terms, and hacker culture that might go over the heads of some viewers. Here's a quick explanation of some of the major terms used in the series so far, and the double meanings some of them may have (NOTE: Major spoilers ahead)

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'Mr. Robot': A Guide to Tech Terms Used in the Series (Photos)

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