Alexa, it’s time to turn yourself off

HAVING resisted my family’s requests for an Alexa device on the grounds that I don’t need, want or trust another woman to run my home (and also because, given my husband’s job, it didn’t seem wise to have a machine that listens in), I find myself somewhat vindicated.

Robert Frederick, a former senior executive at Amazon, told

Monday night’s Panorama programme that he often switches off his Alexa device because ‘I don’t want certain conversations to be heard by humans’.

It reminds me of the time a friend who worked for Google told me the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, refused to have wi-fi in the house — too dangerous, apparently. It struck me as the same sort of selfpreservation principle practised by drug dealers who don’t touch the stuff themselves.

The truth is these technologies are insidious. They present themselves as a way to make life easier — but at what price? In the case of Alexa, it is data-harvesting and loss of privacy. Why do we go along with it?

I UNDERSTAND Imelda Staunton’s frustrations when it comes to people who eat noisily in the cinema — especially in the case of Doritos, which as well as being uncommonly loud also smell like stale socks. But the truth is that for quite a lot of us — me included — a trip to the cinema is also an excuse to enjoy an illicit culinary adventure. I would never dream of eating a packet of Revels in real life — but in the cinema: yum! Much like the Swedish meatballs in the Ikea canteen, it’s all part of the experience.