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We’ve talked Alexa before. I don’t know how it works. Jesse gave it to me for Father’s Day. It’s some kind of highfalutin technical device that can speak, answer questions and play Loretta Lynn songs on request.
I ask about the weather and she’s got today’s forecast on the tip of her tongue. I want to know the results of the Bears game against the Vikings and she’s a little too quick to say, “You lost again.” Right now I’ve got her playing Tracy Bird’s “Lifestyles of the Not So Rich and Famous”.
But I’m not interested this morning on what she’s “giving out”. I have become concerned with what she’s “taking in”.
Charles and Robert James down at the coffee shop swear this Alexa thing is listening in on all of your conversations. It knows what you are talking about, which political party you are aligned with, what movies you’re watching, how often you call your children and what you and your wife are ardently discussing at any particular moment.
I near ’bout laughed them under the table.
Undaunted, they held firm. “You can make fun all you want, but that machine is spying on you! It’s collecting data all the time. You are never alone with that thing in your house!”
R. J. and Charlie didn’t know the specifics. At least, they didn’t share any with me. I asked them directly who it was exactly that was “spying” on us—the government, Russia, the AFL-CIO, Amazon Prime...
They demurred.
I was still shaking my head and laughing as I paid up and headed for the door, “You guys are nuts. Certifiably crazy!”
But ten minutes later I stood in front of Alexa with a little different mindset. Of course, I didn’t say that out loud!
This machine is about the smartest thing I’ve ever been around. It can give you the temperature in Tokyo just as fast as it pronounces the winner of the first Super Bowl. It knows in a split second how many lives have been lost attempting to climb Mt. Everest. It can give you the name of every Triple Crown winner in a heartbeat.
If it can hear, understand and respond to me when I say, “Alexa, play ‘There’s a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere’ by Elton Britt”, then what is keeping this thing from recording EVERYTHING else!
And then a horrible thought raced across my mind. A friend just last week asked me to email him at a yahoo.com address. I did. The very next day I get a yahoo newsletter on MY email... Somehow all of this stuff IS connected!