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I personally am not a fan of these types of devices, but I am also not as doom and gloom about them as GP. IMO, it isn't an imminent threat. It's not going to

I personally am not a fan of these types of devices, but I am also not as doom and gloom about them as GP. IMO, it isn't an imminent threat. It's not going to kill you. It's not going to cause you any physical harm. It's the slow erosion of privacy which is a detriment to everyone. I'm going to avoid the cliche Orwellian arguments and the normalizing surveillance arguments. Both of these have been addressed ad nauseaum. I'm going to go a different route and see if it resonates with you at all. It is incredibly easy for humans to be manipulated. This only gets easier as we have treasure troves of data about individuals. Amazon has many of the smartest people in the world working to manipulate you to do things in their best interest. Sometimes their interests lineup with your best interests and things are great. Other times, their interests will be negative to your life. It is in their best interest for you to not be content with what you have. It probably is your best interest to be content with what you have. It's not wrong to want things, but things will never fulfill you. I'm not saying capitalism is evil, Amazon is bad, or that we aren't living in one of the best times in human history. I am saying that putting a marketing device (which is also a privacy concern) in my home is not something I am interested in. Especially when I can do the 90% with my phone in 5 thumb presses.

criddell 9y ago
All of that I can agree with. However, what gets left out of the equation is that the devices do provide some utility. All I'm really saying is that calling it pure evil is as silly as saying the device has no downsides. I like the driving analogy because even though the worst case scenario is about as bad as it gets, it's not all that likely. I think people, even here, have a hard time separating possibility and probability. A connected speaker has real and immediate benefits for some people. People that use it to buy stuff (I do all the time) aren't going to see ads for associated products like website shoppers do. Frankly, if the Echo scares you, https://amazon.com https://amazon.com should scare you even more. I bet they collect a lot more data in a 10 minute browsing session than they do with months of Echo use.

criddell 9y ago

All of that I can agree with. However, what gets left out of the equation is that the devices do provide some utility. All I'm really saying is that calling it pure evil is as silly as saying the device has no downsides. I like the driving analogy because even though the worst case scenario is about as bad as it gets, it's not all that likely. I think people, even here, have a hard time separating possibility and probability. A connected speaker has real and immediate benefits for some people. People that use it to buy stuff (I do all the time) aren't going to see ads for associated products like website shoppers do. Frankly, if the Echo scares you, https://amazon.com https://amazon.com should scare you even more. I bet they collect a lot more data in a 10 minute browsing session than they do with months of Echo use.