Angst and self-doubt about this supposed conflict between convenience and privacy.
Every day we are confronted more and more by our contradictory choices. On one hand, we want everything more convenient (or at least Big Tech thinks we want everything more convenient). Big Tech says that to make things more convenient, it has to have all of our information, to “tailor” our “user experience” for us, and it might have to send our information to third parties to help “tailor” that “user experience” and “adapt” to our “evolving” “needs.”
On the other hand: We do not want large corporations, and all the small fly-by-night outfits they have contracted work out to, hearing every word we say and seeing our every move in the house.
Personally I recognize no such contradiction. Keep your intrusions out of my household appliances, and I won’t hit them with sledgehammers. Seems simple. Why the hell would I want my toilet connected to the internet? I have a hard enough time keeping it connected to running water.
Seriously, you kids today. I remember when TV remotes were very big deals – and that there was a certain amount of moralizing about people too lazy to get out of their chairs to change channels.
Indeed! I don’t need any help finding what I want when I want it. I don’t need the refrigerator “reminding” me that it’s time to buy milk and eggs. We seemed to remember that pretty well on our own back in the day when we had nothing but a dumb old ice box.
It annoys me to load the Amazon page and see all of the items I looked at last time displayed, along with a load of crap some algorithm suggests I might like to look at as well. I just ignore it the best I can.
I’m not annoyed by it, not much, anyway. That is about what liberty would look like. Lots of commercials. We should get used to it.
Good luck getting rid of all the engineering masturbation. But there still is a market for devices without the gee whiz factor. My car is pretty good in that respect. I think they make Passats in an “old folks” version, and that’s what I have.