We are rapidly approaching one of the technologies highlighted on Star Trek, you are able to talk to your house. Apple has Siri, Windows has Cortana, Amazon has Alexa, and Google has Google now. These all allow you to ask questions and receive answers.
You can ask Alexa who won the game last night between Duke and UNLV. You can inquire if it will rain sometime next week. You can ask it to list your appointments for the day. Just a few years ago, this was only seen in futuristic shows, now it is a reality.
Some of these voice commanded devices can be used to control your house. The Amazon Echo can be configured to run your media. You can ask Alexa to turn up the music or play a certain song. You can ask it find to where a game is playing on television.
For this convenience there is a trade off with privacy. These devices don’t have the power and storage to interpret all the words, so they send the information over the Internet to backend servers that do the processing. That means that some of these devices are always listening and sending the information, out of your control.
Widely popular with ‘techies,’ it will be interesting to see if these devices gain mainstream acceptance. The phones have gained general acceptance, but they are not always listening. This next level of devices that listen all the time like the Amazon Echo are going to push that further, since they are always listening.
Another interesting aspect of this will be what are the legal implications of these devices that are always listening. Is Amazon required to report gunshots that Echo hears? How about if it overhears terrorist plotting? What about cries for help?
These devices have the possibility to make it easier to interact with our other devices and find information on the Internet. They also will require users to surrender an amount of privacy. Smart phones managed to convince people they were worth the trade off, but Google glasses did not. It will be interesting to see how this new category of devices are accepted.