To not see the point of Alexa?

[abacucat]

Unless you are disabled, switching lights on or off is no big deal. And everything else is simply what you can do on a laptop or tablet. I don't see why you would spend money buying another gadget that doesn't do anything new.

Just to add, I wasn't thinking that I was going to use Alexa to turn my lights, heating on and off but thought the dots would be useful for lots of other things.

Probably best to get one because if everyone else has them and you don't then that makes it look like you're hiding something

Op, I don’t see the point of them either so you aren’t the only one.

They just seem like a marketing con to me. They don’t do anything I can’t do with tech I already have. And I like moving. I don’t want to take root on the sofa.

And of course we know that the top people in tech...the higher ups in the tech giant companies, they are very careful to limit the amount of time that their children are exposed to gadgets

I think that they divide the world into:

On one side: people you want on your side should bad times come and the government restrict our rights. (Also mostly people who isn't too stupid and who may stay alive in a zombie apocalypse.)

And the other side:
Those who follow to make their lives a tiny bit easier and who are likely to be amongst the first to die.

I know which side I'm on.

Aren't not isn't.

This is an interesting article.

www.spiegel.de/international/world/china-s-xinjiang-province-a-surveillance-state-unlike-any-the-world-has-ever-seen-a-1220174.html

This is the reality some people face already. It's not something that just happens in films or in North Korea. People are being sent to education "camps" for not toeing the government line. They are encouraged to spy on their neighbours and if their neighbour does something "wrong" they are also to blame if they don't turn them in to authorities.

WiFi is controlled, there is facial security everywhere, houses have barcodes on them so that the government knows who has entered/exited and when.

It's great Alexa can play music and help kids with homework but I'd rather do that myself than put a device like that in my home!

We won't be buying one, I hate the thought of being listened to all the time, I wouldn't be relaxed in my own home.

I use mine as a music player really but turn it off when not using it so it's not always listening. I think having one in the car would be the most useful to be honest, to change music hands free - have they come up with that yet or can people do it on their phones?

I don't see the need for one personally but now i am wondering if it would be useful so that my lodger can turn the landing light on and off as there is no switch by his room and I worry about him tumbling down the stairs at night. But, how on earth does it communicate with my light switches??

I have a HomePod because apple makes its money on its products not on adverts (google) or being a marketplace (Amazon). I basically use it as a speaker/kitchen timer.

For a more nuanced analysis of the Chinese social credit system take a look at the PDF link that I posted up thread
it is a rather long read though

Also I’m pretty sure we’d notice if the government turned into the kind of government that disappears people for having the wrong opinions and it’s not like I can’t get rid of the various devices that listen in if that happens.

Also I’m pretty sure we’d notice if the government turned into the kind of government that disappears people for having the wrong opinions and it’s not like I can’t get rid of the various devices that listen in if that happens.

That's the point though. If you have Alexa set up to control your heating, your lights, your oven and everything else, it's not going to be that easy, is it?

And it's not as though these things happen overnight. You're not going to wake up tomorrow and find that the government can listen to you through Alexa and it's as simple as throwing it away to "solve the problem". It happens gradually. For your "benefit". So we already have facial-recognition CCTV here to "keep an eye on terrorists", for example. That can easily be extended to other things without us knowing about it until it's too late.

If you read the article upthread about the Xinjiang province, it started there to control the small Muslim population. Now it extends to every single person in that area. Even the communist party itself is controlled by "Big Brother" and the surveillance system, and they were once the ones in charge. WiFi is controlled, transport is controlled - everything is linked into one network, and that includes the inside of people's homes.

Again, have you read 1984? Watched a programme about North Korea? If you lived there, or China, would you buy Alexa? Presumably not, because you don't trust the government - so why do you think our government is any different? They could do exactly the same thing as the Chinese are doing and people are already buying devices that mean they could do it even more easily.

Madness.

I mean, I’m sure it would make things quicker, but isn’t it ultimately encouraging us to become even lazier?

There are lots of versions of 'disappearing'
look at the mass incarceration that they have in the USA all linked to the rise of private prisons who stand to make large profits out of everyone who's locked up

Why would it make you lazy to make things quicker?

Is it lazy to spend time doing homework with your children because you can press a button on a machine instead of using a mangle?

Nothing wrong with easy, doesn’t make you lazy.

It's all about profiling you in order to predict and manage your behaviour, a comprehensive behaviour modification system
and of course we are the ones doing the work to train all the algorithms so that they can get better at predicting and managing our behaviour
we are working to build our own prisons

I can't see the point of them either. I need real fingers and hands to turn lights on and off, cooker on and off and heating radiators up and down, so I don't think it would work in my house anyway.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. I once watched a documentary about North Korea and was horrified by the listening devices everyone had in their homes, installed by the government.

The difference with the UK is, we pay for them ourselves.

Alexa/Echo/whatevers give me the creeps.

That thing is in your house, listening to everything you say ..... argh!!!!

I've said this before and I'll say it again. I once watched a documentary about North Korea and was horrified by the listening devices everyone had in their homes, installed by the government.

The difference with the UK is, we pay for them ourselves.

But Alexa plays fun music and can tell you the time and help you with your shopping list and farts on command, and helps kids with their homework. It might listen to my every move but it does all that other fun stuff too so it's definitely not the same as what happens in China and North Korea!

/sarcasm.

I find ours useful. We were going to buy a new DAB radio after my last one gave up the ghost from being knocked off the kitchen windowsill one too many times by the cat, but got a couple of Echo devices instead.

When i'm in the kitchen staring into the fridge I can just call out my shopping list and it's automatically added. I can set timers and reminders to do things whilst i'm thinking about it.

We have lights on in the evenings so it isn't pitch black when we get home that stay on till bedtime and we can turn them all on and off at the same time using the Echo rather than faffing going up and down the stairs.

When I get out of the shower in the morning I say "Good Morning" to it and it reads me the weather forecast, the daily news briefing from the BBC, tells me what is on my calendar for the day and what my morning commute looks like so I know whether to avoid the motorway or not; all whilst I'm getting dressed and I don't have to get my phone out to do any of it! I'm planning to get a wifi plug on the kettle so I can ask her to boil the kettle whilst i'm in the shower too, so I don't have to gulp down a scalding tea before leaving for work.

I even asked it what the black hole of calcutta is this morning and it told me.

The only frustrating thing i've found is my idiot sister changed the music i was listening to in the bedroom to Baby Shark the other week. That was annoying.

There are lots of things people like to have that I can’t see the point of. Doesn’t mean they’re useless. We cant get any radio where I live, digital won’t tune in so I use Alexa for that. And audiobooks. Also It’s not listening all the time 🙄

adaline you speak far too much sense, I suspect you're guilty of several thought crimes

This all reminds me of the secret room that Winston and Julia use as a hideaway in 1984. They believed no one was listening but every word uttered had been recorded and used against them, violently.

I'm starting to believe Orwell should be compulsory reading in schools now that this tech actually exists. It could produce some much needed critical thinkers instead of the herdslice/suicide/legislature of lemmings we have ready to run off the edge of the cliff in pursuit of the person in front of them who has the latest gadget!