I absolutely loved reading Lem as a kid. I really enjoyed the short novel "Automatthew's Friend" - it was written decades earlier, but the circumstances were s

I absolutely loved reading Lem as a kid. I really enjoyed the short novel "Automatthew's Friend" - it was written decades earlier, but the circumstances were something I could imagine happening in my lifetime (a helpful, robotic "friend" living in your ear). Then, a couple decades later, I tried Siri with Airpods, and had this staggering realization: I'm living in a sci-fi book, right here, right now. I arrived in that future world, and almost didn't notice. I really recommend the story; it speculates on the impact of inviting "personal" technology into our lives. What's really bothering me, is that I needed to put a literal talking robot into my ear to realize what happened; but the same level of "personalization" of technology is already happening everywhere you look: PCs, phones, TVs, fridges, sound systems, timepieces, door keys, light bulbs... We're sticking a CPU, a network interface, and our credentials into all of these things like it's something completely natural, without stopping to think about the impact on our selves.