Google has replicated my 70’s world, but as always, with a slightly sinister twist.
Reading on “Ars Technia”
The Google Assistant's "Broadcast" feature has long existed as a way to blast a message to every Google smart speaker in the house. Instead of hunting down every individual family member at dinner time, put those smart speakers to work by saying, "Hey Google, broadcast 'It's dinner time!'"
We had a Nutone “Intercom” as though we were a hyper-efficient modern office, so Mom or Dad could walk to the kitchen and call me to dinner instead of walking to my room and calling me to dinner, as though I didn’t know that the rule was “show up for dinner @6 or you are on up shit creek”. Vivid language at home, but Real Technological progress.
We also had a “central vacuum” for the house which sounds great until you use it the wan neurasthenic suction for anything except the lightest of dust — my mother was quite disappointed at the effect on thick baby-blue pure synthetic carpet. We had an “Electric Eye” for outdoor lights to ward off robbers for a house which usually had unlocked doors — remember that kind of life, before video cameras crammed in every nook and cranny?
And naturally, a clicking remote control for the TV, which itself effectively only had 3 channels (CBS, NBC, PBS) until we had the rooftop directional antenna with a motor connected to a box on the TV so you could tune in UHF better (ABC). Unfortunately the directional antenna control was not remote control so you had the magic of changing a channel, getting up, redirecting the antenna, then sitting back down.
Or perhaps using an intercom to ask me to come fix the antenna which didn’t seem to really be calibrated. Layers of labor-saving technology.
The intercom had the bonus effect of making me nervous occasionally feeling that somehow the microphone was on in my room while talking with friends in person or on the phone, which I fixed by simply opening the intercom box and clipping wires. Privacy! But today, imagine, for only $300 per room, for all the trimmings — about $50 in 1970’s money, you can invite the largest digitizing/transcription and archiving service in the world into every room of your home to listen to conversations. Instead of walking to the child’s room to call them to dinner — since you may not have created a rule like “be home for dinner @6 or you’re up shit creek” — god knows, I was a free-range child if people even remember the idea.
And all your verbal conversations, notes, reminders, instructions, all are happily in the hands of one of the largest corporations in the world to use as they see fit, with no oversight, or even visibility to what they have.
Makes my indignation of whether or not Mom of Dad are accidentally listening in to talking with friends about, say, getting together to play a smoking game of Risk (hey, did you clean up your room first!) seem like, well, child’s play.
But how do we cut the wire today?
12
