Coming soon

If this isn't me and all my friends yet, it will be before long:

15 comments:

Cass said...

Heh :)

We were on vacation at the lake and the house we rented had an Amazon echo.

Other than asking it about the weather, we were too terrified to do anything else :p

/I don' know about that....

douglas said...

Curiously, my brother got one of those for my parents, and they seem to like it well enough. I refuse to get one. In fact, I don't even like talking to my phone to use google except in the car while driving.

I must be older in cultural years than in temporal years.

raven said...

Does anyone actually believe it does not listen in full time?
Amazon specifically will not answer that question, at least, not in the limited time I had to research it.

gee, let's see- we have the most valuable data possible-what people REALLY think and talk about in private-and we are not going to retain it for use? This gets rid of most of the lie factor- you know, the stuff folks lie about on surveys, questionnaires, etc -usually to protect themselves. if you thought the census form was invasive, just image them having the data of what you say in private.
And if amazon has it, the NSA has it as well.
Echo is Orwell's prophecy come true.

Cass said...

Does anyone actually believe it does not listen in full time?

Huh. I don' know about that :p

Seriously, the Echo in the lake house was in the kitchen, and we walked into the other room when we were having serious conversations :p

I can't imagine wanting one, though it did occur to me that it might be helpful to my elderly parents.

Texan99 said...

I love to think of some poor NSA puke listening to hours of my mother-in-law attempting to explain what's wrong with the fountain on her patio. It has that thing. No, not the pump. There's a thing, she can't think of the word for it. It doesn't work. Alexandra, what is that thing called? "Uh huh."

I have such a perfect conviction of nearly everyone's indifference to my views that I've never been able to work up an appropriate level of alarm about surveillance. It's unrealistic and lazy on my part, I imagine. To tell the truth, the only danger I expect to encounter is some county do-gooder deciding that I can't safely be left alone, because I've been heard expressing doubt whether my doctor's advice is entirely helpful, and I've ignored my insurance company's helpful offer of a home health visit. (I haven't, but a neighbor gets these irritating calls frequently, and has to turn them down over and over. No, thank you. No, really, that won't be necessary. No.)

Grim said...

My sister bought my mother one of these things -- the real ones, of course, not the joke ones -- and mother doesn't care for it much. I don't like it both because it listens to me, but more because it sometimes misunderstands something I said as a request for information and begins speaking to me. That gives me the momentary impression that someone has come into the house without my knowledge, which I react to badly.

Cassandra said...

I have such a perfect conviction of nearly everyone's indifference to my views that I've never been able to work up an appropriate level of alarm about surveillance.

I've had similar thoughts, but they center more around the notion that the government is competent enough to monitor the conversations of 300 million+ people and make sense of any of it.

How many of these known wolf types have been interdicted before they can cause the media to refuse to contemplate their motives? (much less any connection between their ideology, the explicitly professed goals of their fellow travelers, and their actions) :p

If only everyone were as easy to understand as garden variety extrem... err... Republicans and Tea Partiers.

raven said...

Understand the first thing they are going to do is monitor for commercial purposes- what you say during commercial breaks, while watching tv, that sort of thing, and they won't be human listeners, but computers looking for key phases or words.

Second, the government is(probably) not going to listen as a proactive measure- just like the Utah data center storing all our calls, emails etc, the purpose here is to have a ready depository to look through AFTER the target is selected. This is the modern day version of "show me the man, and I will show you the crime" -when someone becomes a political threat, their data will be sifted and used against them.

having a device in your home, that listens to you, and , in the newest iteration, FILMS you, and uploads to some other location, is, IMO, insane. If anyone had suggested installing these by edict, there would be a revolution- yet people willingly install them themselves.
As a point of reference, just like a new law proposal, evaluate not on the ostensible purpose, but on how far the use could be twisted.

Tom said...

Yep, raven's nailed it.

E Hines said...

I have such a perfect conviction of nearly everyone's indifference to my views that I've never been able to work up an appropriate level of alarm about surveillance.

It's not a matter of whether you have anything to hide. It's a matter of Government has no business snooping in the first place: what it can't find it can't distort. The 4th Amendment is as much about Government arrogance as it is about Government overreach.

...a neighbor gets these irritating calls frequently, and has to turn them down over and over. No, thank you. No, really....

She doesn't have to take the call in the first place. That's an advantage of an old-fashioned answering machine: I have one on my landline, and if I don't recognize the voice, I don't answer and let the caller speak to the machine's microphone. Similarly with my cell, although I do have to extend myself to the point of picking the thing up to see the phone number of the caller. It's amazing, too, how many people think what they have to say to me is so trivial that they won't leave a message, but they're perfectly happy to try to waste my time with their trivia.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

She uses a cellphone, so I guess she can tell it's the insurance company calling and doesn't necessarily want to miss the call in case it's about something real. I'm with you, though--I generally require a caller to leave a message so I can screen the call.

raven said...

I was at a friends house, we were talking firearms, and the conversation shifted to the apparent desire of some on the left for a new civil war. At this point I made a few predictions on how the course of such a conflict would go, (things I would never say on a blog, lest they be erroneously interpreted as a desire, rather than a forecast)and a minute or so later, this unknown voice chirps in- I about jumped out of my skin, "whats that?! "Oh, that's Alexa...." It put a damper on the conversation.
The Stasi would have done anything for such a device.
We KNOW it listens.
WE KNOW it uploads.
All we have left is the naive hope it is not archiving, a hope that even amazon refuses to support, declining any comment on what happens to the data.

Grim said...

What did Alexa say? "Actually, Antifa's use of scaling levels of street violence suggests that the activist left is more psychologically prepared for a civil war..."

Grim said...

That seems to be the popular opinion that I'd guess Alexa would scarf up and regurgitate, anyway. It's not true, of course. A commitment to not being the first to resort to violence is not the same thing as being psychologically unprepared to resort to violence.

E Hines said...

A commitment to not being the first to resort to violence is not the same thing as being psychologically unprepared to resort to violence.

Indeed. On the other hand, I'm happy to preempt. I'm not willing to bet my neighbor's life, or my wife's, that the thugs' first shots will miss.

Eric Hines