Opinion: The voice-activated ‘assistant’ and its ilk stifle serendipity, discovery and … life
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Alexa obliges.
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Perched on my kitchen table, it plays any music I ask for — Jewish klezmer, Balinese gamelan, the Allman Brothers’ Statesboro Blues. Alexa delivers jazz from New Jersey’s WBGO, classical symphonies from CBC-FM, or an eclectic, world-view musical mix from Salt Spring Island’s CHIR.
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It tells me when the Stilton cheesecake baking in the oven is done. It can explain why the sky is blue — not that I’ve asked. (Something about gases in the atmosphere? Dunno. Don’t care.)
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It tells me jokes, all of them groaners, which I suspect are designed to endear it to me. (“What do you get when you cross a hippie with a ninja? Peace and quiet.”)
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Sunrise
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It brings me news, including, disturbingly, from The Vancouver Sun, including, even more disturbingly, my columns, which it catalogues. Alexa will catalogue this column about Alexa, which makes me wonder — given its rudimentary form of artificial intelligence — if the self-revelatory act of reading about itself will lead Alexa to a new level of heightened consciousness. I sincerely hope not.
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“Alexa,” to quote the corporate blurb on the Amazon site, “makes your life easier, more meaningful, and more fun by letting your voice control your world. Alexa can help you get more out of the things you already love and discover new possibilities you’ve never imagined.”
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Let us pause here for a moment and unpack that alarming paragraph.
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For one thing, I’d question if Alexa does make my life easier, or if it is a good thing that it does, or, more importantly, if I want it to make my life easier.
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In Alexa’s world, “easier” equals instantaneous gratification and limitless choice — which are seductive and addictive attributes, because if I want to dance by myself to Marvin Gaye’s Got To Give It Up in my kitchen at 3 a.m. because I’m still a little drunk from the dinner party the night before, I can. Alexa will oblige.
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But what do I give up to have that?
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Well, spontaneity, for one thing. One of the joys of listening to the radio is stumbling upon a favourite song while driving — “Turn it up!” — but if you can hear that favourite song whenever you want, the joy it gives you fades, as clothes fade with wear.
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As for “getting more out of the things you love” — what corporate crap that is. How could anyone, much less a machine, presume to know how I appreciate the things I love, or why I have come to love them? Love and the appreciation of artistic expression are intensely private things that are intermingled with personal experience, and that Alexa’s programmers believe they can unlock that experience by algorithm is symptomatic of the nerdish hubris technocrats suffer from.
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Which is to say: I don’t need to get more out of the things I love. I just need the need to love them.
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As for discovering “new possibilities” we’ve “never imagined”: Oh, please. Alexa doesn’t facilitate new discoveries: it limits them.
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It makes us lazy, and numb to new experience by granting us unlimited access to the things we “already love” or — if we prefer to let our preconceived notions and prejudices guide us — to avoid the things we already hate.
