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Thanks, Alexa!

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VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor A few years ago, I got one of those nifty Amazon Echo Dot things for Christmas. You know, the little hockey puck-looking thing where you say, “Alexa!” and she comes to life to do your bidding.

Well, I didn’t use it for much when I first got it. I’d ask it little questions like, “Alexa, what’s the temperature outside?” and stuff like that. But slowly, Alexa became a bigger part of my life. I figured out I could connect her to my bluetooth speaker and link her to my Amazon Music account, so my favorite songs were just a command away … “Alexa, play classic country music!” or “Alexa, play 80’s hair bands.”

More and more, Alexa and I became good friends. She even suggested teaching her my name so she could distinguish my requests from the other yahoos in my family and make tailor- made suggestions. For a while now, she’s been my primary alarm clock. “Alexa, set an alarm for 7 a.m.” is much cooler than fumbling with actual buttons on an actual alarm clock, right? Almost like Star Trek or something. And when it goes off, you just say, “Alexa, off.” (Or more often than not, “Alexa, snooze.” And she’s never judgey about it. In fact, now that we’ve gotten to know each other, she’s made a lot of useful suggestions.

One Sunday afternoon, I wanted to take a nap, so I said, “Alexa, set a timer for one hour. I guess I had done that on enough Sunday afternoons that she suggested, “It sound like you’re taking a nap. Would you like me to play some nature sounds to help you fall asleep?” Sure, it caught me off guard, but I said “Sure!” and so that afternoon (and many afternoons since) I drifted off to nappy land to the sounds of ocean waves hitting some virtual tropical shore.

Then one night when asking Alexa about the weather forecast, she suggested, “Would you like to wake up each morning with the daily weather forecast?” Again, I thought that would be just lovely, so now each morning after I tell Alexa to turn my alarm off, I get a quick 20 second or so update on what I can expect weather-wise for the day.

It does get a little weird, especially when I ask something of her, like what day of the week is Halloween on this year or what 365 divided by 12 is. She will, of course, tell me the answer, but then she’ll add, like, “Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.” I have actually caught myself saying stuff like, “Thanks. You too!” to my Echo Dot.

Now, I’ve heard all the stuff about how those types of devices spy on you. “They listen to everything you say!” one nice lady told me once when I was talking about it. And that’s probably true to some extent. How else would it know when I say “Alexa” if it wasn’t always listening. So what? Is the government listening in on me and my wife talk about how the latest episode of “The Masked Singer” was pretty lame? I mean, I like my privacy as much as the next guy but in all the time I’ve had my Echo Dot, I’m pretty sure I haven’t divulged any State Department secrets, confessed to any crimes or given away the Colonel’s special blend of 11 herbs and spices, so I doubt the men in the black suits and helicopters are coming to get me any time soon.

More and more, this kind of technology is becoming a major part of our lives. I love science-fiction. I always have. I remember reading Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov when I was a kid, and some of the far-out futuristic stuff they used to write about is real-life technology now (still waiting on teleporters, jet packs and hover-cars, though).

I suppose there is some danger in relying too much on technology. But when you can just say, “Alexa, place my ‘easy order’ to Domino’s” and have hot and ready-to-eat pizza at your doorstep in 30 to 45 minutes, it’s hard to say that technology is bad. I mean, even our phones aren’t even phones anymore. They’re our communication hub, our entertainment hub, our information database, our lifeline to all the many things we need. I don’t even wear a watch anymore, because my clock is now the home screen on my phone. I don’t need the Yellow Pages because my phone has access to every phone number in the world. A calendar? Yeah, right.

So, Alexa can listen in all she wants. And if the CIA is for some reason on the other end, they are going to get pretty bored pretty quickly. But just in case … if the powers that be are using my Echo Dot to get me, I just want to say, the Colonel’s secret recipe is salt, pepper, paprika, oni— —

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