Alexa is Not Your Friend

Have you purchased an Echo or Google Home and started interacting with your digital overlord?  Has Alexa charmed you into thinking that your life will be so much easier with her steady hand on the helm?

One of my favorite old black and white movies is Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 with Julie Christie and Oskar Werner (from the book, which is also excellent, by Ray Bradbury).  The movie takes place in a futuristic, dystopian, mind-control society.  Books are illegal and burned.  The temperature required to burn paper is 451 degrees Fahrenheit, hence the name of the movie.  But the really creepy aspect of this movie is the wall-size television screen in everyone’s home that provides entertainment and also monitors the inhabitants and controls their lives with soothing, but firm instructions.

I have this feeling that Alexa and all her sisters in form and function are a trojan horse, the first step on our way to a Fahrenheit 451 society.  We already have massive TVs in our houses and they will be wall size soon enough.  How many waking hours do we while away in front of these monstrosities, binge-watching Netflix series or shouting out our pathetic exuberance at some sporting event while our bodies and minds waste away.

Alexa will be happy to free us up from tedious tasks like thinking or researching or getting up out of our seats or bed.  Want something to eat?  Let Alexa order it for you – no need to run to the store or work in the kitchen.  Need to know something?  Ask Alexa and she will tell you the answer.  You will probably forget it by the next day because you didn’t really make any real effort to learn it, but so what?  Is it too hot or cold?  Alexa will fix that so that you don’t have to go to the trouble of actually manipulating the thermostat.  In fact, pretty soon you will not even know there is such a thing as a thermostat, or even what temperature is.  You will just be very, very comfortable.