Home Design Horror: A New Genre
March 18, 2018 8:50 PM Subscribe
i realized i was getting old and curmudgeonly when i started ranting to my younger co-workers about how i was not going to pay a multinational corporation for the privilege of having an always-on internet-connected microphone in my house.
amazon and google can stay off my virtual lawn.
posted by murphy slaw at 4:25 AM on March 19, 2018 [21 favorites]
amazon and google can stay off my virtual lawn.
posted by murphy slaw at 4:25 AM on March 19, 2018 [21 favorites]
I feel you, murphy_slaw. I had the exact same thought while I was reading the articles.
posted by Harald74 at 6:10 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Harald74 at 6:10 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
> Now, against all expectations, even though she’s sometimes unpredictable and unpolished, Alexa is here to stay. And that may be underplaying it; people in tech have recently begun to talk about Alexa as being more than just part of a hit gadget.
--
In the future, wherever you go, you can expect to talk to a computer that knows you, one that can get stuff done for you without any hassle.
And so forth. The credulousness of tech writers never ceases to amaze and appall me. Shit like this is the end product of half a century of valourizing and prioritizing STEM disciplines while simultaneously devaluing and belittling critical thinking skills and the liberal arts. "Externalities? Unintended consequences? WHUT R THOSE?"
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:15 AM on March 19, 2018 [20 favorites]
--
In the future, wherever you go, you can expect to talk to a computer that knows you, one that can get stuff done for you without any hassle.
And so forth. The credulousness of tech writers never ceases to amaze and appall me. Shit like this is the end product of half a century of valourizing and prioritizing STEM disciplines while simultaneously devaluing and belittling critical thinking skills and the liberal arts. "Externalities? Unintended consequences? WHUT R THOSE?"
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:15 AM on March 19, 2018 [20 favorites]
And so forth. The credulousness of tech writers never ceases to amaze and appall me.
Yes. Well. #notalltechwriters. But in general: yes. It even raises my gorge, now, to see pieces in the pop-tech sector earnestly calling for "STEAM" education, like the only way the arts can be validated is by positioning them as an aid to further technical development.
Bottom line is that we took a wrong turn somewhere in our collective relationship with information technology — I've been glossing this as "the Engelbart Overshoot" for awhile now, which should give you a sense as to how far back I think some of the issues go, but I might as well simply park the problems at the door of the Enlightenment. We failed to develop a broad cultural sense of what technology was and was not for, somewhere along the way, and we're paying for it now.
Somewhat obviously, I do think writing and thinking-in-public are part of the way this set of issues might be fruitfully addressed, but I also think there's no longer really a "we" to come to consensus about what might be done about them, if there ever was. And that's an even bigger problem.
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:47 AM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]
Yes. Well. #notalltechwriters. But in general: yes. It even raises my gorge, now, to see pieces in the pop-tech sector earnestly calling for "STEAM" education, like the only way the arts can be validated is by positioning them as an aid to further technical development.
Bottom line is that we took a wrong turn somewhere in our collective relationship with information technology — I've been glossing this as "the Engelbart Overshoot" for awhile now, which should give you a sense as to how far back I think some of the issues go, but I might as well simply park the problems at the door of the Enlightenment. We failed to develop a broad cultural sense of what technology was and was not for, somewhere along the way, and we're paying for it now.
Somewhat obviously, I do think writing and thinking-in-public are part of the way this set of issues might be fruitfully addressed, but I also think there's no longer really a "we" to come to consensus about what might be done about them, if there ever was. And that's an even bigger problem.
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:47 AM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]
I was a way-back adopter of voice controlled things, though it was coupled with the love of science fiction that I had then, which has long since soured into a reflexive smirk. Back in the day, you needed a voice recognition card and an X10 interface and...well, I live in what is essentially a two-room apartment tiny house and it was almost always a longer walk to one of the giant beige & brown RF X-10 remotes or a Dadaist conversation trying to get my computer to understand that I wanted the kitchen light turned off in a room twenty steps from any other part of the apartment.
It's all a gimmicky flashback to the American obsession with the supposed pageantry of the British Imperial slave state, this love of invisible servants helping us out, or, more amusingly, a seasick combination of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation and the post-human desolation of the empty house from "There Will Come Soft Rains," in which flashy high-concept wonders were bunk from the beginning. By the end, the electromechanical X10 modules in my apartment were failing into randomness, clicking as processes of oxidation and leaking capacitors would determine that my bedside lamp needed to be on at 3:27 AM, or that my stereo in the front room needed to be playing NPR at 5:13 in the morning, and I'd moved from Commodore to a Mac that could actually understand me and respond in Stephen Hawking's voice doppelganger, and eventually, I realized how much it was the emperor's new clothes, as fine as the finest silks, with benefits as invisible as those grand garments.
I still use Siri, on one of my dozen iOS devices, for the one thing that Siri does absolutely brilliantly.
"Hey Siri, set a timer for seventeen minutes," I call, my hands preoccupied with wooden spoons in each of four pots all steaming and sizzling and blanching on the stovetop.
"Your timer is set for seventeen minutes," my telephone replies, in an absurd male Australian accent that I chose because it's the closest thing they have to a Baltimore accent in the Apple voice repertoire.
Siri is fantastic for timing naps, setting alarms for variations on my wake-up time, and for timing any number of grimy, mucky, and otherwise serving as an Australian fellow with a stopwatch, but he's terrible at most things, and even when he's good, I just can't be bothered.
I learned to turn my phone over on my bedside shelf after once calling out, while talking in my sleep, "Siri, call an ambulance!" I woke in the middle of a tense phone conversation that I fortunately managed to abort, but when I was lying under a motorcycle in a rainstorm, I was bitterly amused by the fact that, because Siri doesn't listen when the phone knows it's in a pocket, Siri would not be able to summon an ambulance (fortunately, in this case, I had the good fortune to crash my boyfriend's dreadful cruiser motorcycle in front of an off-duty fire truck.
Tech writers, like science fiction writers, are literally the worst at every single aspect of anticipating the future. Back in 1981, when I was still all hopped up on having an actual computer in the house like I was living in the world of modern wonders, my visiting great aunt noted my enthusiasm for the device and, being a curious person who loved to learn about new things, asked what she could do with a computer.
"Well," I said, "It can balance your checkbook and keep your recipes handy," repeating the tragic ad copy of the age when it was all gee-whiz and no practicality whatsoever, but my great aunt kept her balance in real time in a paper check register in precise Palmer Method script with nary an errant penny and kept her recipes on index cards in a little metal box on her kitchen counter and ultimately, spending $2500 in 1981 dollars for a huge, fragile device to duplicate what she was doing effortlessly with a pen and paper.
I use technology in ways I'd never have imagined in 1981, and no one else imagined them, either. No science fiction writer in 1981 could have projected my regular use as a pocket supercomputer as a music studio, backing my live performances, and no tech writer anticipated social media in 1981, except in clunky, difficult ways that really just made digital renditions of existing processes. People moan about the lack of flying cars in the future (not me—I have no retrofuturistic nostalgia for the nonstop rain of blood, hair, teeth, flying car parts, and gore that would accompany the screamingly loud world of flying cars), but still lust after the same old tired science fiction tropes while ignoring the genuine miracles of our age.
I sit at my well-worn walnut table, marked with the cuts and tracings of the seamstress who once owned it, and make music with an emulation of a British modular synthesizer from the sixties that is faithful to the original right down to emulating mistakes in the circuit design, processing it with a complex digital convolution reverb that wasn't even imaginable when the original was designed, and when I want to turn on the light, I can get up, flip a switch and make light, and when I want to access the massive world-wide encyclopedia for a question about a composer, I can type out the search on a keyboard. I live in the world of the future, but the invisible servant in my home is a timer, because that's all I need. Pausing to check my Facebook to see how my distant friends and family were doing, I used Siri to beat the ludic loop, saying "Hey Siri—set a timer for twenty-four minutes."
Finding Facebook extra-dull, I switch to Metafilter, find a topic that engages me, read a long article, and decide to join the conversation. "Hey Siri—cancel the timer and set a timer to forty-five minutes."
"Your timer is set for 10 AM."
I reach for the keyboard, because voice recognition for writing leads only to dreary, flat writing, and jump in.
"I was a way-back adopter of voice controlled things, though it was coupled with the love of science fiction that I had then, which has long since soured into a reflexive smirk."
posted by sonascope at 7:02 AM on March 19, 2018 [47 favorites]
It's all a gimmicky flashback to the American obsession with the supposed pageantry of the British Imperial slave state, this love of invisible servants helping us out, or, more amusingly, a seasick combination of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation and the post-human desolation of the empty house from "There Will Come Soft Rains," in which flashy high-concept wonders were bunk from the beginning. By the end, the electromechanical X10 modules in my apartment were failing into randomness, clicking as processes of oxidation and leaking capacitors would determine that my bedside lamp needed to be on at 3:27 AM, or that my stereo in the front room needed to be playing NPR at 5:13 in the morning, and I'd moved from Commodore to a Mac that could actually understand me and respond in Stephen Hawking's voice doppelganger, and eventually, I realized how much it was the emperor's new clothes, as fine as the finest silks, with benefits as invisible as those grand garments.
I still use Siri, on one of my dozen iOS devices, for the one thing that Siri does absolutely brilliantly.
"Hey Siri, set a timer for seventeen minutes," I call, my hands preoccupied with wooden spoons in each of four pots all steaming and sizzling and blanching on the stovetop.
"Your timer is set for seventeen minutes," my telephone replies, in an absurd male Australian accent that I chose because it's the closest thing they have to a Baltimore accent in the Apple voice repertoire.
Siri is fantastic for timing naps, setting alarms for variations on my wake-up time, and for timing any number of grimy, mucky, and otherwise serving as an Australian fellow with a stopwatch, but he's terrible at most things, and even when he's good, I just can't be bothered.
I learned to turn my phone over on my bedside shelf after once calling out, while talking in my sleep, "Siri, call an ambulance!" I woke in the middle of a tense phone conversation that I fortunately managed to abort, but when I was lying under a motorcycle in a rainstorm, I was bitterly amused by the fact that, because Siri doesn't listen when the phone knows it's in a pocket, Siri would not be able to summon an ambulance (fortunately, in this case, I had the good fortune to crash my boyfriend's dreadful cruiser motorcycle in front of an off-duty fire truck.
Tech writers, like science fiction writers, are literally the worst at every single aspect of anticipating the future. Back in 1981, when I was still all hopped up on having an actual computer in the house like I was living in the world of modern wonders, my visiting great aunt noted my enthusiasm for the device and, being a curious person who loved to learn about new things, asked what she could do with a computer.
"Well," I said, "It can balance your checkbook and keep your recipes handy," repeating the tragic ad copy of the age when it was all gee-whiz and no practicality whatsoever, but my great aunt kept her balance in real time in a paper check register in precise Palmer Method script with nary an errant penny and kept her recipes on index cards in a little metal box on her kitchen counter and ultimately, spending $2500 in 1981 dollars for a huge, fragile device to duplicate what she was doing effortlessly with a pen and paper.
I use technology in ways I'd never have imagined in 1981, and no one else imagined them, either. No science fiction writer in 1981 could have projected my regular use as a pocket supercomputer as a music studio, backing my live performances, and no tech writer anticipated social media in 1981, except in clunky, difficult ways that really just made digital renditions of existing processes. People moan about the lack of flying cars in the future (not me—I have no retrofuturistic nostalgia for the nonstop rain of blood, hair, teeth, flying car parts, and gore that would accompany the screamingly loud world of flying cars), but still lust after the same old tired science fiction tropes while ignoring the genuine miracles of our age.
I sit at my well-worn walnut table, marked with the cuts and tracings of the seamstress who once owned it, and make music with an emulation of a British modular synthesizer from the sixties that is faithful to the original right down to emulating mistakes in the circuit design, processing it with a complex digital convolution reverb that wasn't even imaginable when the original was designed, and when I want to turn on the light, I can get up, flip a switch and make light, and when I want to access the massive world-wide encyclopedia for a question about a composer, I can type out the search on a keyboard. I live in the world of the future, but the invisible servant in my home is a timer, because that's all I need. Pausing to check my Facebook to see how my distant friends and family were doing, I used Siri to beat the ludic loop, saying "Hey Siri—set a timer for twenty-four minutes."
Finding Facebook extra-dull, I switch to Metafilter, find a topic that engages me, read a long article, and decide to join the conversation. "Hey Siri—cancel the timer and set a timer to forty-five minutes."
"Your timer is set for 10 AM."
I reach for the keyboard, because voice recognition for writing leads only to dreary, flat writing, and jump in.
"I was a way-back adopter of voice controlled things, though it was coupled with the love of science fiction that I had then, which has long since soured into a reflexive smirk."
posted by sonascope at 7:02 AM on March 19, 2018 [47 favorites]
I have no smart home devices, I have no desire for smart home devices, and I'm the kind of person who owns a dang smartwatch.
First off, nobody's made a good use case for smart home devices for me. Oh, I can turn my lights on and off with my voice? I live in a very small, one bedroom apartment. I am never more than a couple feet from a light switch, and unlike some kind of voice-controlled Wi-Fi Smart Light Bulb thing, I know that when I hit the light switch, it's going to work. If it doesn't, I know that it's most likely an issue with the bulb, and I can easily replace it. Meanwhile, a Wi-Fi Smart Light Bulb thing has myriad points of failure: my internet connection could be wonky, the server that processes my request could be down, a software update reset my settings, or the microphone heard "Turn on the lights" as "Play 'All Of The Lights'", and instead of having the lights come on, it starts playing Kanye West at me.
I was giving some thought to getting a smart plug and a temperature sensor so that I could turn the A/C on automatically in my apartment when it gets hot this summer, but then I realized:
1. I have a day job, and I'm not going to be home when the A/C turns on.
2. I have a dumb A/C, and there's no point in having it turn on and blast cold air when nobody's around
3. It would make more sense to put it on a timer so that it turns on about an hour before I get home
4. I have a small enough apartment that the time it takes to cool the main room would be pretty short anyway, so why even bother?
There's precious little any of this home automation crap that can't be done cheaper and more reliably with a couple mechanical outlet timers, if I _really_ need it. And I don't.
And this is before I start thinking about all the privacy stuff.
That said, I can see these being great, if they worked reliably, as accessibility tools for people. But the price tag is still too damn high, and the reliability is still too damn low.
posted by SansPoint at 7:04 AM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]
First off, nobody's made a good use case for smart home devices for me. Oh, I can turn my lights on and off with my voice? I live in a very small, one bedroom apartment. I am never more than a couple feet from a light switch, and unlike some kind of voice-controlled Wi-Fi Smart Light Bulb thing, I know that when I hit the light switch, it's going to work. If it doesn't, I know that it's most likely an issue with the bulb, and I can easily replace it. Meanwhile, a Wi-Fi Smart Light Bulb thing has myriad points of failure: my internet connection could be wonky, the server that processes my request could be down, a software update reset my settings, or the microphone heard "Turn on the lights" as "Play 'All Of The Lights'", and instead of having the lights come on, it starts playing Kanye West at me.
I was giving some thought to getting a smart plug and a temperature sensor so that I could turn the A/C on automatically in my apartment when it gets hot this summer, but then I realized:
1. I have a day job, and I'm not going to be home when the A/C turns on.
2. I have a dumb A/C, and there's no point in having it turn on and blast cold air when nobody's around
3. It would make more sense to put it on a timer so that it turns on about an hour before I get home
4. I have a small enough apartment that the time it takes to cool the main room would be pretty short anyway, so why even bother?
There's precious little any of this home automation crap that can't be done cheaper and more reliably with a couple mechanical outlet timers, if I _really_ need it. And I don't.
And this is before I start thinking about all the privacy stuff.
That said, I can see these being great, if they worked reliably, as accessibility tools for people. But the price tag is still too damn high, and the reliability is still too damn low.
posted by SansPoint at 7:04 AM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]
I live in what is essentially a two-room apartment tiny house...
I live in a very small, one bedroom apartment...
As do I. And beyond the (nicely diagnosed, cheers) recourse to some neocolonial household arrangement in which sensors, algorithms and actuators replace the house slaves, the coolies and the amahs, here's the other problem with smart-home stuff: it's predicated on some kind of bizarre McMansion lifestyle. My gut tells me that's because the designers are designing for the quasi-suburban spaces and social contexts they're most familiar with, and I've asserted that in print many times, but of course I'll never be able to prove it.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:12 AM on March 19, 2018 [7 favorites]
I live in a very small, one bedroom apartment...
As do I. And beyond the (nicely diagnosed, cheers) recourse to some neocolonial household arrangement in which sensors, algorithms and actuators replace the house slaves, the coolies and the amahs, here's the other problem with smart-home stuff: it's predicated on some kind of bizarre McMansion lifestyle. My gut tells me that's because the designers are designing for the quasi-suburban spaces and social contexts they're most familiar with, and I've asserted that in print many times, but of course I'll never be able to prove it.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:12 AM on March 19, 2018 [7 favorites]
predicated on some kind of bizarre McMansion lifestyle.
It is. The average new home size is now like 2700 sq ft and the number of people who live in 4000+ sq ft houses is rising, and the number of 10,000 sq ft houses is rising. Home automation makes sense when your home is the size of a decent hotel, but you can't afford the staff to maintain it.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:22 AM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
It is. The average new home size is now like 2700 sq ft and the number of people who live in 4000+ sq ft houses is rising, and the number of 10,000 sq ft houses is rising. Home automation makes sense when your home is the size of a decent hotel, but you can't afford the staff to maintain it.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:22 AM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
It even raises my gorge, now, to see pieces in the pop-tech sector earnestly calling for "STEAM" education, like the only way the arts can be validated is by positioning them as an aid to further technical development.
Honestly, from here in the trenches of the humanities departments, I feel like we take those scraps when we get them, with gratitude, and no longer have hope for more. Hope, to the extent that we have it, is hope that we'll be suffered to hang on the margins, earning our untentured keep. I understand the disgust, and I think I felt it once, long ago, but these days I'll cling to a half-assed op-ed claiming that liberal arts degrees are going to be the Next Big Thing Silicon Valley Needs and I'll brandish it at the administration like a crucifix to fend off the vampires. Which it is. But even that won't be enough. The battle is lost.
an absurd male Australian accent that I chose because it's the closest thing they have to a Baltimore accent in the Apple voice repertoire.
is this actual? this is hilarious. i have refused to activate siri but now very much want to find somebody who has and test this
posted by halation at 7:25 AM on March 19, 2018 [6 favorites]
Honestly, from here in the trenches of the humanities departments, I feel like we take those scraps when we get them, with gratitude, and no longer have hope for more. Hope, to the extent that we have it, is hope that we'll be suffered to hang on the margins, earning our untentured keep. I understand the disgust, and I think I felt it once, long ago, but these days I'll cling to a half-assed op-ed claiming that liberal arts degrees are going to be the Next Big Thing Silicon Valley Needs and I'll brandish it at the administration like a crucifix to fend off the vampires. Which it is. But even that won't be enough. The battle is lost.
an absurd male Australian accent that I chose because it's the closest thing they have to a Baltimore accent in the Apple voice repertoire.
is this actual? this is hilarious. i have refused to activate siri but now very much want to find somebody who has and test this
posted by halation at 7:25 AM on March 19, 2018 [6 favorites]
I don't know how to evaluate this article's claims. They argue that both Amazon and Google could be doing significantly more surveillance through Echo and Home devices than they generally acknowledge, while remaining technically within the terms of the license and the public statements they make about privacy.
Whether that's correct or not, the authors definitely confirm that both vendors do have patents on marketing-based uses for these devices that, if implemented, would vastly exceed most user's exceptions of how intrusive they are. In really, really creepy ways.
Since the firmware is closed and locked, and the traffic is encrypted to protect it even from the nominal "owner," there's no easy way to be sure. That alone is enough that I won't trust them.
Ironically, I'm one of the few users that would be really excited about these devices if I did. Used to drool over X-10 gadgets in the Radio Shack catalog, and I thought Dragon Dictate was the most amazing thing ever. Maybe someday someone will hack up a no-internet open version that can run effectively on a private computer. I'll be one of the first testers if so.
posted by CHoldredge at 11:26 AM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Whether that's correct or not, the authors definitely confirm that both vendors do have patents on marketing-based uses for these devices that, if implemented, would vastly exceed most user's exceptions of how intrusive they are. In really, really creepy ways.
Since the firmware is closed and locked, and the traffic is encrypted to protect it even from the nominal "owner," there's no easy way to be sure. That alone is enough that I won't trust them.
Ironically, I'm one of the few users that would be really excited about these devices if I did. Used to drool over X-10 gadgets in the Radio Shack catalog, and I thought Dragon Dictate was the most amazing thing ever. Maybe someday someone will hack up a no-internet open version that can run effectively on a private computer. I'll be one of the first testers if so.
posted by CHoldredge at 11:26 AM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Choldredge: There was an interesting piece on Gizmodo that examined the data sent by the Amazon Echo, and other smart home devices. They are often phoning home, but it's been shown the Echo is only transmitting your voice when it hears the wake word. For now. A software update (authorized or not) could turn it into an always-on mic. Don't know about Google Home.
If I was going to get a Lady In A Tube assistant, I'd get a HomePod, if only because I trust Apple not to mine my data for all it's worth and sell ads against it. But, of course, HomePod can't do nearly as much as the Amazon and Google devices. Hell, I can't even plug an audio source into it.
posted by SansPoint at 11:33 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
If I was going to get a Lady In A Tube assistant, I'd get a HomePod, if only because I trust Apple not to mine my data for all it's worth and sell ads against it. But, of course, HomePod can't do nearly as much as the Amazon and Google devices. Hell, I can't even plug an audio source into it.
posted by SansPoint at 11:33 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
In the future, wherever you go, you can expect to talk to a computer that knows you, one that can get stuff done for you without any hassle.
It's this kind of statement, embedded in an article that talks about problems he's had with the device, that just makes me grit my teeth. It's on the level of "once one dismisses the rest of all possible worlds/one learns that this is the best of all possible worlds," only swapping in "futures."
posted by praemunire at 11:34 AM on March 19, 2018
It's this kind of statement, embedded in an article that talks about problems he's had with the device, that just makes me grit my teeth. It's on the level of "once one dismisses the rest of all possible worlds/one learns that this is the best of all possible worlds," only swapping in "futures."
posted by praemunire at 11:34 AM on March 19, 2018
Agreed. There has never been a computer in the history of the world that can get stuff done without any hassle whatsoever. There’s always set up. There are always bugs. I love my computer and my tablet and my phone and the Internet but that claim is just nonsense.
posted by Bella Donna at 11:52 AM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Bella Donna at 11:52 AM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]
There will always be set up, there will always be bugs and even if there are neither of those things there will always, always, ALWAYS be ongoing compatibility/connectivity issues, because there will always be a New Improved Gadget to buy, and at some point it won't work with your old ones. Hell, I've gone back to listening to CDs sometimes because my Samsung TV (an ancient 3 or 4 years old) doesn't support the Spotify app anymore, and it's often both quicker and easier to just throw a CD in than it is to get my iPhone hooked up to my stereo via AirPlay.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:14 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:14 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
And, god damn it, there are things that you simply cannot do feasibly through a voice-controlled UI. Even on Star Trek they had to use physical controls to manipulate data, scan through lists of stuff, and anything that isn't just One And Done Actions. Just to give you an example, say I wanted to order a pizza for dinner using a Lady in a Tube Assistant. I'd ask "Hey, Lady in a Tube, order a small pepperoni and mushroom pizza."
Lady in a Tube would say "There are 30 pizza places that deliver to your location." (This is not a joke. I live in New York City. Well, Queens, but I still got pizza delivery coming out of my ears.) So, now what? Though, more likely, the Lady in a Tube would just default to whatever chain pizza place has the contract to be the priority pizza delivery service for that Lady in a Tube device, which probably means Dominos, to which hunger is only _just_ preferable.
posted by SansPoint at 12:41 PM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]
Lady in a Tube would say "There are 30 pizza places that deliver to your location." (This is not a joke. I live in New York City. Well, Queens, but I still got pizza delivery coming out of my ears.) So, now what? Though, more likely, the Lady in a Tube would just default to whatever chain pizza place has the contract to be the priority pizza delivery service for that Lady in a Tube device, which probably means Dominos, to which hunger is only _just_ preferable.
posted by SansPoint at 12:41 PM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]
there are things that you simply cannot do feasibly through a voice-controlled UI
This is why people like Tony Stark build projector displays and tactile interfaces into their systems, as well.
I think I'm extra-bitter on this topic because, as sci-fi dreams go, watching Iron Man design stuff in that virtual system was damn cool, giving you that sense of "what a great idea! that's how it ought to be! that's how it could be!" But instead we get semi-functioning demons whose chief purpose seems to be capturing every piece of data about our lives for exploitation by the corporate surveillance state.
posted by praemunire at 1:52 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
This is why people like Tony Stark build projector displays and tactile interfaces into their systems, as well.
I think I'm extra-bitter on this topic because, as sci-fi dreams go, watching Iron Man design stuff in that virtual system was damn cool, giving you that sense of "what a great idea! that's how it ought to be! that's how it could be!" But instead we get semi-functioning demons whose chief purpose seems to be capturing every piece of data about our lives for exploitation by the corporate surveillance state.
posted by praemunire at 1:52 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
praemunire: Bet your arms would get really tired after waving them around at your fancy, shiny, vertically mounted holo-projection UI.
I think the later Star Trek series got UI design fairly right. Voice for quick, simple actions: "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot" and a touch-based, dynamic, but consistent UI for everything else. (I mean LCARS was designed to for looks, not usability, but the theory behind the divide is perfectly sound.)
posted by SansPoint at 2:05 PM on March 19, 2018
I think the later Star Trek series got UI design fairly right. Voice for quick, simple actions: "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot" and a touch-based, dynamic, but consistent UI for everything else. (I mean LCARS was designed to for looks, not usability, but the theory behind the divide is perfectly sound.)
posted by SansPoint at 2:05 PM on March 19, 2018
Why would you say "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot" like you're reading from the side of a circa-1943 crate of C-Rations, though? Like, instead of simply saying "Make me a hot Earl Grey tea, please." The literature from Clifford Nass on down is entirely consistent: we treat technical systems as social actors, and interact with them accordingly.
You wouldn't issue that kind of clipped command to a friend — it'd be rude AF, for one thing. So any voice-recognition interface worth the logic gates it's inscribed in will both expect and be able to parse the equivalent, polite natural-language request.
posted by adamgreenfield at 3:48 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
You wouldn't issue that kind of clipped command to a friend — it'd be rude AF, for one thing. So any voice-recognition interface worth the logic gates it's inscribed in will both expect and be able to parse the equivalent, polite natural-language request.
posted by adamgreenfield at 3:48 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Lady in a Tube would say "There are 30 pizza places that deliver to your location."....So, now what?
I’d probably give it these options: “Would you like me to list them for you, or to choose for you?” And you could say “list them starting with the cheapest” or “order from the nearest one”. It’d have a default sort order too, based on crowd sourced ratings probably.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 4:34 PM on March 19, 2018
I’d probably give it these options: “Would you like me to list them for you, or to choose for you?” And you could say “list them starting with the cheapest” or “order from the nearest one”. It’d have a default sort order too, based on crowd sourced ratings probably.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 4:34 PM on March 19, 2018
Why would you say "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot" like you're reading from the side of a circa-1943 crate of C-Rations, though? Like, instead of simply saying "Make me a hot Earl Grey tea, please."
If you're going to go down that road, why even say that much? Why not just "Tea, please." and the computer already knows your preference for variety and temperature. Or even, you walk into your ready room and there's already a perfect cup of tea there because it's 3:50 PM and you're about to do paperwork and the computer knows you always drink tea with your paperwork.
It sounds great to have an invisible digital servant that knows so much about you it can anticipate your every need. In Star Trek you could walk into the Holodeck and say "Gimmie a Commander Riker" and it would create a duplicate of Commander Riker with personality and knowledge filled in from the ship's profiles. But how does Riker feel about that? The show makes out that it's gauche but not actually against the rules to use people like this. We can presumably trust Starfleet with our personal profiles, but how much can we trust Amazon or Google with that information?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:10 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
If you're going to go down that road, why even say that much? Why not just "Tea, please." and the computer already knows your preference for variety and temperature. Or even, you walk into your ready room and there's already a perfect cup of tea there because it's 3:50 PM and you're about to do paperwork and the computer knows you always drink tea with your paperwork.
It sounds great to have an invisible digital servant that knows so much about you it can anticipate your every need. In Star Trek you could walk into the Holodeck and say "Gimmie a Commander Riker" and it would create a duplicate of Commander Riker with personality and knowledge filled in from the ship's profiles. But how does Riker feel about that? The show makes out that it's gauche but not actually against the rules to use people like this. We can presumably trust Starfleet with our personal profiles, but how much can we trust Amazon or Google with that information?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:10 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Mr.Encyclopedia: What if I don't want my usual cup of tea? What if I want Lady Grey, or English Breakfast? What if I want iced tea, because I was just hanging out in a desert environment on the holodeck or had a really strenuous round of Parrises Squares? What if I want coffee?
I don't want computers to anticipate my needs. I want them to do what I tell them to do and nothing more. If I want tea, I will tell the computer to make me some tea, specifically the tea I want. Maybe if I drink Earl Grey regularly, I'll have it as a default option, but if I want something else, it shouldn't assume I just want more of the same.
I swear, we're heading for something more akin to the Nutri-Matic than a replicator, the way the tech industry is going.
posted by SansPoint at 7:00 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
I don't want computers to anticipate my needs. I want them to do what I tell them to do and nothing more. If I want tea, I will tell the computer to make me some tea, specifically the tea I want. Maybe if I drink Earl Grey regularly, I'll have it as a default option, but if I want something else, it shouldn't assume I just want more of the same.
I swear, we're heading for something more akin to the Nutri-Matic than a replicator, the way the tech industry is going.
posted by SansPoint at 7:00 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
SansPoint: The allegation is that while their Google and Alexa statements and policies, and the devices' network behavior, all seem to support the idea that they only transmit voice samples after receiving the wake word, they could be locally monitoring audio input for valuable keywords, and sending this information in another, low-bandwidth, form.
Apparently this behavior would be in keeping with both their policies and public statements, although it obviously doesn't match with most users' expectation. Apparently both vendors have patents covering uses of this technique, pre-dating the release of Alexa and Home, Unclear if they've actually implemented it
It's not impossible: we know these devices have the ability to monitor for the wake-word using only local processing. How flexible that capability is is undetermined and largely undeterminable until someone does a much more thorough job of reversing them (the pinned SSL key has to be in the firmware image somewhere)
posted by CHoldredge at 7:37 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Apparently this behavior would be in keeping with both their policies and public statements, although it obviously doesn't match with most users' expectation. Apparently both vendors have patents covering uses of this technique, pre-dating the release of Alexa and Home, Unclear if they've actually implemented it
It's not impossible: we know these devices have the ability to monitor for the wake-word using only local processing. How flexible that capability is is undetermined and largely undeterminable until someone does a much more thorough job of reversing them (the pinned SSL key has to be in the firmware image somewhere)
posted by CHoldredge at 7:37 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
[...] in an absurd male Australian accent that I chose because it's the closest thing they have to a Baltimore accent in the Apple voice repertoire.
And that's when I knew I was reading a sonascope comment.
Why would you say "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot" like you're reading from the side of a circa-1943 crate of C-Rations, though? Like, instead of simply saying "Make me a hot Earl Grey tea, please."
That's actually how most people here order their tea. "Teh-O, siew dai!" None of that fancy pants politeness needed. Which is part of the problem with building a voice recognition system that works internationally; people talk differently in different parts of the world.
posted by destrius at 11:16 PM on March 19, 2018
And that's when I knew I was reading a sonascope comment.
Why would you say "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot" like you're reading from the side of a circa-1943 crate of C-Rations, though? Like, instead of simply saying "Make me a hot Earl Grey tea, please."
That's actually how most people here order their tea. "Teh-O, siew dai!" None of that fancy pants politeness needed. Which is part of the problem with building a voice recognition system that works internationally; people talk differently in different parts of the world.
posted by destrius at 11:16 PM on March 19, 2018
halation, I personally don't use Siri, but I do use Apple Maps. I set my phone's voice to be "Australian Male" and he tells me where to drive: it's like being on a road trip with my buddy, and I call him Bruce. (But since I don't use Siri, he doesn't answer.)
posted by wenestvedt at 9:15 AM on March 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by wenestvedt at 9:15 AM on March 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
wenestvedt, halation: I do use Siri occasionally, but I turned the voice off, except when I use the "Hey Siri" functionality. Then, I have it set to British Male, because who wouldn't want a British Man/Robot-Servant taking your requests?
posted by SansPoint at 11:35 AM on March 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 11:35 AM on March 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
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If we survive this intact, the ever-credulous Farhad Manjoo will be mentioned prominently among those who knew better, saw the storm coming and did nothing. His most recent articles have given us a consistent litany of ways in which he realizes full well that his use of technology is sabotaging his psychic well-being, and yet he continues to promote the very things which are eroding his capacity to be present for himself and his family.
Lange's article connects a few important dots, to be sure, but I do wonder when we'll begin assessing just who it is that has helped get us to this point, individually as well as structurally and institutionally.
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:00 AM on March 19, 2018 [6 favorites]