The opinion that smart meters are intended for couch potates was put forward earlier. I would say, dumb couch potatoes.
The example of the iron - if all houses were set up like the mansion on Tracey Island, ,with additional Scutters from Red Dwarf, it might be useful, but what would the extra power used be? Information and data services use a huge amount of power, what we see at our keyboards is just the very small tip of a very large iceberg.
The people who make decisions about our use of technology are invariably those who were good at Latin and Greek at school and have spent their lives being shielded from the real world by people who, for a time, can convince them that they know what they are talking about. They tend to be influenced by gushy glossy brochures coming from tech firms in areas where recreational drugs are far too easily available. But thats just a passing thought.
And looking back on early TV - I used to pedal my bike to my older cousins house to watch Crackerjack, when we eventually got one of our own, if you wanted to watch the other channel, not only did you have to go over to the set, you had to reach round the back to work the large switch on the extra box screwed on the back. Not like today where you have a choice of dozens of channels, usually with nothing on worth seeing.