At Least Two Million Children Now Using Smart Speakers in the UK: Report (strategyanalytics.com) 52
Smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home are proving a big hit with Britain's kids, according to the latest survey from Strategy Analytics. The report adds: According to Smart Speaker User Survey -- UK Results, at least two million children are now using smart speakers in the UK, particularly for listening to music, searching for information and hearing jokes and funny stories.
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Yep, the old saying is true...
What one generation accepts, the next generation embraces.....
Constant surveillance will be the common 'norm' to them as they grow.
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So I can imagine a kid doing homework with a smart speaker and basically learning nothing. But when testing comes along you won't have that crutch to fall back on.
Oh, give it some time. It may not be very long before students can use these devices on tests because it is unfair to have dumbasses competing with non-dumbasses without something to level the playing field.
Equality Now!!!
Smart Speakers? (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean Big Brother monitoring devices that this generation is being conned into making an integral part of their lives. They already carry around a tracking device for everywhere they go and everyone they communicate with, now, they're getting used to having 24/7 audio monitoring within the walls of their own homes. They've tried a couple of times for 24/7 video monitoring too (XBox Kinect and now "Live" Cam). They'll get there eventually.
I'm glad I only have a few years left on this world, it's going to be a terrible place to live for the coming generations. The only way to fix it is to have a major World War, wipe out 3/4 of the population, and re-boot civilization.
What a terrible time we live in!
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In 50 years, it's within the realm of possibility that extreme poverty will be eliminated. If you're overly concerned with the potential perils of modern societ
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For exactly these reasons as CPU power becomes greater and memory cheaper, so server less systems will dominate. Cheap processing power at home, why send information to a corporate controlled and manipulated server. The home sever the processes your voice locally will dominate because it will promote exactly that and of course market the threats of corporate controlled servers.
Once home voice recognition becomes cheap enough, so the corporate advertising and manipulation service becomes totally undesirable
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Please Fix the title (Score:5, Insightful)
At Least Two Million Children in UK Now Under Audio Surveillance
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GPDR? (Score:2)
Our new technology is bunk (Score:2)
Not to be an unreasonable skeptic, but these things offer little that anyone needs. You can listen to music by playing MP3 files. These gadgets seem like a way of further dumbing down the internet instead of pushing people to be better than they are right now.
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Not to be an unreasonable skeptic, but these things offer little that anyone needs. You can listen to music by playing MP3 files. These gadgets seem like a way of further dumbing down the internet instead of pushing people to be better than they are right now.
Not just dumbing down but not even as functional.
For music, I like looking at my playlists, all the songs from an artist, etc. For most things, looking and clicking is less clunky than a voice interface.
Now where a voice interface is useful is, say, while driving. But my living room is the last place I would ever need a voice interface.
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For most things, looking and clicking is less clunky than a voice interface.
Ummm, no. Complex things, probably so. Simple things, probably not.
Requires a deliberate person (Score:2)
This requires you knowing what you want, instead of randomly shouting out song titles because they appeared on social media, as most people seem to do.
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My Amazon Echos are the easiest way I know of to play a playlist or album, or check the weather in the morning. Before I would have needed to either always have my phone on me (not always true at home as it might be charging or I might not be wearing pants), or I need to go find my phone, open an app, and select a playlist.
They certainly aren't that useful, but they do a small number of jobs very well. I sure get a lot less long term use out of other things I have spent $100 on.
Easier than clicking? (Score:2)
I have an old laptop with 200 gigabytes of MP3 files. I can waddle over to it, hold the donut I am eating with my teeth, and click on whatever I want.
Is Alexa that much easier?
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For adults, those gadgets just flatter our natural laziness and make us feel as part of a giant group, a very strong even if unconscious motivator.
For kids, I think those are more simply seen as toys. Kids love talking toys and toys they can interact with. The motivation here is more about fun and discovery.
In both cases, it's remarkably easy to get those gadgets adopted by large user bases.
For sure they just look like necessary steps towards a 1984-like, world-wide totalitarian regime. The only missing
We're heading toward "Brave New World" (Score:2)
In my view, and I state this in addition to your excellent points, we are heading toward "Brave New World": our desire to be important, successful, experience pleasure, etc. will make our consumer society into a soulless empty hell in which there is no escape. We're already mostly there. The movie Idiocracy began as satire, became prophecy, and now is basically a documentary, and that's in a dozen years.
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Enjoy your life being recorded (Score:2)
Siri..... (Score:2)
Read me 1984 by George Orwell.
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Common conversations with the Smart Speaker (Score:2)
"Hey Google, what was Dad doing to Mom last night?"
"Alexa, send me a six-pack of rubbers."
"Alexa, show me all the tobacco vaping products I can buy right now."
"Hey NEST theromstat, please record all mom's conversations today and save to 'momsaid.txt' on my phone."