Alexa, Where Are You
I’m watching you
What can Alexa do? In the future, it can be everything. Does it scare you? This year, more people are using devices more than ever.
On my iPhone, it knows how many hours is my screen time. I have been shopping online. I have been paying with Apple Pay for subscriptions.
It feels I don’t need to go out of my house. From food to grocery, I can order it from Amazon. Name it, there is an app for everything.
How many movies and series have I watched on Netflix, that I wouldn’t have known, if not for its recommendation. The same with Spotify, I listen to music and podcasts, again some of which I wouldn’t have known, if not for its recommendation.
A few weeks from now, I will be exercising with my Apple Watch, thanks to the new Fitness Plus subscription.
Every device I use is helping me cope with being at home. The majority of us feel it is a blessing to have these gadgets, otherwise, we won’t survive in 2020.
Today, I was watching Robert Scoble how he does his shopping list. He does this with his Facebook Portal which has the Amazon Alexa built-in inside.
He asks, Are you ready for some freaky shopping?
You have to watch the Facebook video to see what he means by freaky. The Facebook portal uses computer vision. As Robert explains, it can recognize objects, if you put an orange in the camera view, it knows it is orange.
The cameras on these devices have improved over the years. The Facebook Portal has a 4k camera and that it can zoom in. The viewpoint changes and what it sees, it can interpret.
Back to shopping, the good thing about Alexa is the voice commands. Who wouldn’t like to make their shopping list without writing it on paper?
And you can continue adding to your shopping list, any time, and anywhere you are in your house.
That is amazing, but at the same time, moving forward, these companies will push it further. The camera on these devices can look for movements and record your behavior.
As Robert illustrated, the camera knows when you are eating cheerios. How many boxes you finish in a month, and with that information, it would know if your cheerios go low in inventory.
Soon, Alexa will always watch, even while you are sleeping, or away from your house. The announcement from Amazon of a similar device like the Facebook portal, that follows you. It will soon do things on its own. It means the technology is already here.
What’s next would be Amazon’s automatic shopping, and as Robert says, it can be pretty accurate.
And that would be nice. Now, you don’t even have to think about what you need to buy or when to buy. Alexa knows, what you need to buy, based on your behavior and consumption. In the future, it can make that decision for you.
Automatic shopping can happen in a few years, and it will happen, according to Robert Scoble. By 2030, the world will be completely different, if you think during the pandemic, the world came to a halt. What happened is, it advanced how we have adopted to technology.
Big tech companies have great power over us, but they make our lives easy and convenient. If you worry about privacy, it is a thing of the past. If you still have privacy issues then you wouldn’t have a cellphone or even a credit card.
We have given up on privacy a long time ago. We have given tech companies access to our data. Our data is more valuable to them, more than the products they sell. They know who we are, in a few years, we would be living in a dystopian society, think of Black Mirror, but for real.
In 2030, the pandemic may long be forgotten but the digital landscape will be beyond what we see right now or even imagine.
But I’m no longer afraid of the future, it comes with its surprises. For now, I look at my Amazon Echo device, and tells it; Hey Alexa, play me some Etta James music.