Out of touch in Silicon Valley

AMAZON wants to let strangers into your house and train a surveillance camera on your front door. And they’d like you to pay them $250 for the privilege.

Skeptical? So are many who saw last week’s announcement of “Amazon Key,” a new service to make home deliveries even more convenient, available exclusively to Amazon Prime members.

Here’s how it works: Members of Amazon’s two-day delivery service can pre-order a kit that includes an Amazon security camera called the “Cloud Cam” and a compatible smart lock. Once you install the lock and the camera (inside your house! Within 25 feet of the door!), you’ll be able to access an “in-home” shipping option for your Amazon purchases. When a delivery driver arrives, Amazon will verify the address and time and let them in. Amazon Key owners will be able to watch them from their phones, as the camera records the whole thing. They plan to expand this access to professional service providers such as dog walkers and maids.

Brilliant, right? So convenient. Now you’ll never have to wait around to meet the mailman or worry about getting a package stolen off your porch. Your benevolent e-commerce overlord asks, “What else could you possibly want?”

As it turns out, I want a lot more. The thought processes of Silicon Valley innovators are a curious thing. Many observers have noted that the most common proposals seem to fall into the category of “things that I, a 25-year-old man, wish that I could still get my mother to do for me.” But even more eyebrow-raising is the fact that many of these ideas share a misunderstanding of the average person’s hierarchy of goods — what things matter to them and how much. It may come as a surprise to those who are willing to live in Google’s parking lot and drink Soylent meal replacement instead of eating real food, but some of us care about more than just convenience.

Examples of this mismatch abound. Take Bodega, a startup idea that was floated (and promptly sank) just a few weeks ago. Its object was to sell nonperishable convenience goods out of unmanned “pantry boxes” (read: vending machines) that would be located in high-density areas such as college dorms and apartment buildings.

Except it turned out that convenience and anonymity weren’t everyone’s highest goods. Apparently some people wanted to walk down the street and interact with others. Perhaps they even valued the sense of community that a neighborhood mom-and-pop could bring over innovation for innovation’s sake.

Then there was the ignominiously recalled Juicero, a machine that would make individual pours of cold-pressed juice using home-delivered produce packets and WiFi-enabled home machinery. But it turned out that the average person valued having a non-exorbitant grocery budget (the Juicero machine cost $400, and each juice packet

$5 to $8) and not feeling like they’d been scammed by marketing teams.

Amazon Key is perhaps the most outre example of this phenomenon yet. Yes, I value convenient deliveries, but I value my security more — better to strategize around postal schedules than be assaulted by a person hiding in one’s home! And while I dislike rained-upon packages, I’m loath to install a corporate-controlled surveillance apparatus inside my house.

New technologies are often packaged as amenities we shouldn’t have to live without, and any trade-offs are made to seem meager in the face of comfort. But there’s more to life than convenience — maybe someone should let Silicon Valley know.

Tim Brinton