Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon?
You write a letter or a greetings card and pop it in a post box. An hour or two later, you absent-mindedly wonder if the recipient has read your note yet. You think, fleetingly, that it’s strange they haven’t replied to you yet – they’re normally so quick to respond to messages.
Then it dawns.
The other day someone showed me a family photo, taken years ago. A good old-fashioned hardcopy print that had been developed from an actual roll of film. As they placed it on the table in front of me, I instinctively reached out my hand towards it, forefinger and middle finger primed to zoom-in on a detail that had immediately caught my eye.
Just two of the curiosities of a modern existence dominated by technology.
Another is the privacy paradox that describes the anomaly between our apparent concern about the way our private details are gathered, stored and harvested, and our behaviour in blindly offering up our personal data to big tech companies through their social media platforms or online shopping interfaces.
If your household’s reliance on Alexa has made her feel like one of the family, read on and reflect on the balance of power in that relationship.
I hope you, Alexa, and Big Brother have a very pleasant weekend.