Tech is getting smarter, we all know this. There’s questions that need to be asked, however, that I feel haven’t been or adequately answered. Privacy is becoming more of necessity and an actual decision maker in this fast-paced world for more of us but where’s our limit?
- Smart phones have been reading our faces for a while now, deciding when the time is right to scroll the page for continuous touch-free reading for one example
- This seems odd to me. Is there a market for laziness?
- Think of the metrics this can generate. It can work out the speed in which you read. It could (probably) even decide your attention span to certain subjects
- It could even go far enough to differentiate your mood whilst viewing images or reading text
- There’s devices (on multiple platforms) which can listen to voice commands and bring up information (visual and sound) from almost every corner of the world.
- I kind of get the necessity for this with screenless devices but does it need to be so intrusive?
- Again is this laziness or is it satisfying a real need?
- What information are we feeding the machine whilst it is none-responsive? Or rather simply; is “off” really off?
- Time pieces with internet access and filled to the brim with sensors
- The data collected; is it not being stored in “the cloud”?
- Does it really need to monitor my sleep? If it realises I have bad sleeping habits, how can it help me? Seriously?! “Dr.Watch will see you next!”
- Watches with cameras and microphones is something from a spy movie, barely practicle to someone commuting to work. (Have you ever been in a commuter train? It’s a terribly sad ordeal where the local weekend slob is actually scared of coughing in a completely silent carriage. A fair life away from having a full blown conversation with a time-keeper)
Im not going to dig deeper or speculate what the next [insert major brand here] flagship will include because I will literally repeat myself many times over. These are probably my 3 major hates about “smart tech” …but the problem of these goes further.
We are not only exposing ourselves to these devices but also people around us. I don’t know if the man standing in front of me is completely ignorant and has all the bells and whistles wurring whilst I try to have a descreet conversation with my car insurance provider. Or I discuss my mother’s medical ailments.
Now by no means will this mean I’ll close up shop tomorrow and run to the hills in need of total naturalistic isolation. But the fact that as a species, we seem to gain little from this ungoverned (ungovernable?) mass collection of data, points to a black questionable hole to where it supposedly resides.
If I knew the data will do us good is turned off when I mean it to be, I will be much more comfortable. I myself will always turn these technologies off… Not because I don’t believe in them, but more that I find it hard to trust the nature of its use, ultimately.
On reflection, I would be more comfortable still with a big button that you need to press to query these systems on demand, rather then a passive command system.