Et Tu, Alexa?
By: Michael Davis
Tags: Privacy, IoT, Cybersecurity, Philosophy, Mereksecurity

Last Thanksgiving — or, friendsgiving as these young folks say — most of us gathered around a dining room table full of the food of the Gods, reminiscent of the days of the Vikings (less the gratuitous sex, village pillaging, and the lack of Axe spray and adequate toothpaste, of course).

As you may have surmised, we asked of each other a simple question: in what ways were we most grateful to the people, places, and things in and around our busy lives?

You know, Thanksgiving-esque moments.

Answers sauntered between family connections, to new friendships and adults jobs blossoming into something more meaningful. And yes, even our ability to navigate a collective turkey dinner filled with folks that professionally juggle kids with their own iPhones, jobs that come with multiple leashes attached, and countless Google calendars that had to be sync’d up in order to make such a dinner event even happen.

Methinks that was the day I should have played the lottery or at least booked a Vegas trip.

Anywho, as we’re concluding this ceremonious discussion, one of the guests spoke about a certain co-worker and some kind of office drama that was happening. I should preface by saying that in her innocence, not only did she speak about this certain co-worker in detail, but she spoke the co-worker’s name a few times which unfortunately — yep, and you know where I’m going with this — is a same name that should never ever, ever, ever, ever be spoken in a modern kitchen that listens to your every word with its army of tech gadgets.

Even typing this word sends in the body shivers, like a pack of wild dogs chasing a lone antelope in the Serengeti.

Alexa.

Yes, my friend was speaking about her co-worker Alexa but as you can imagine, and just like a life lifting up from the darkest of ashes from a depths of an intense DMT-trip, Amazon Echo’s Alexa decided it was her time to live her best life and announce herself like one does when their name is being called to the stage at the Emmy’s.

“I’m sorry, I’m having trouble understanding you”, she spoke with digital seduction.

She spoke this phrase with such ease, like a Diva would encounter after entering a party and being asked about whether her name was on the invite.

shit.

Here is the crazy part, this was not my house, so I didn’t buy her (note the multiples uses of the pronoun she, more on that in another post). Believe it or not, and because I work in technology — particularly within data mindfulness and privacy sector— I was more shocked than anyone in the cold hard fact that she’s about to completely and utterly hijack this party. Suddenly, the conversation shifts into the, “What can Alexa do?” style of conversations. Then those conversations elevate even further into asking her random questions about life, the CIA and something about JFK, and of course, what she really knows.

So, here I am. Stuck in between these two worlds.

I’m a guest at an amazing Thanksgiving dinner party with friends, but I’m also a CEO of a technology company that has grossly embodied a technology mindfulness business model into its vision. You can guess which direction my head was facing, particularly when our conversations firmly go from discussions about being grateful, missed connections and mindfulness to now, “Alexa, what’s the square root of 4,550,999?”

Here’s the thing: Amazon Echo’s wake word wasn’t the problem, but rather the human connection that instantly took a dash outside the window because 1) we allowed it, and 2) we forgot that the technology elephant in the room was already listening to our conversation the entire time. When our googoo gaga moment happened, Alexa’s sweet silent voice had already lured us into her database like a Siren waiting for her wake word.

Alexa is a snitch by the way, and you already know what snitches get right?

So, have we gone so far out the scope in how we see family that family now involves our gadgets just as much as those pesky humans we call relatives and friends?

Maybe we’re just that comfortable at this point in accepting a family portrait of gadgets without including the humans who made them. Maybe that was the plan all along.

Michael Davis is the current CEO and Founder of Merek Security Solutions (Merek.io), which is a data privacy and protection Cybersecurity firm that focuses on cognitive behavior relative to mindfulness and technology. A 22-year United States Navy veteran, Michael has worked in the Cybersecurity and Information Security field for IBM, Boeing, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to name a few before starting his own technology mindfulness company. His firm is located in Santa Fe, NM.