Today at lunch, my friends told me that Amazon’s Echo device is ‘always on’ – always listening and recording what it hears. Makes sense because she’s always on alert for her name (Alexa) to be at my beck and call. This was particularly troublesome news because Alexa is in my bedroom. I used to have an external camera on my monitors – back in the day of real offices. When it wasn’t in use, I had to aim it away from me. It was a little unnerving to have it pointed at me, even though I knew it wasn’t on. This week I saw someone working on their laptop with a sticky covering the laptop camera. I haven’t gone that far. Facebook picks videos and ads for me that it thinks I might like (I seem to get a lot of bra ads for some inexplicable reason). Pinterest picks Pins that I might like. LinkedIn sends me jobs that my skills are suited for… and if I stop enjoying how convenient some of these things are and think instead about how it’s done or what else It knows, it’s pretty creepy.
I googled myself again the other day just to see how I’m showing up there. I didn’t see anything alarming, other than one picture of me I really hate. Good thing because I wouldn’t begin to know how to remove something really bad. Ever google-stalk people you know? C’mon, at least admit it to yourself. I do this occasionally, often for someone new; always for a new date. There is a line between Internet Good and Internet Evil and it seems like you have to accept and live in a world of both and hope for the best. So should I click on that weird FB story about growing babies in my living room?