Dear Alexa,Bixby, Siri....

Dear Alexa , Bixby and Siri, we need to have a serious conversation about us...

Some write with bright eyed enthusiasm of a Tech enabled future where our busy lives are made "easier" , like maybe an updated real life version of The Jetsons.....or perhaps being British I imagine it closer to Wallace and Gromit.

Tom Goodwin for instance writes about tech and innovation in a sceptical way I enjoy and can relate to ; increasingly though I feel uneasy about this topic at a basic level ,and what if not how this future needs to look like if it is to be a force for good ....

Not only is a commonly presented vision of this future pretty shallow looking , but there are for now a number of major issues that I feel are not properly addressed relating to our individual identities and personal data.

Amidst all the well meaning words devoted to the need for Purpose, it strikes me that a technologically driven future which benefits only urbanistas like myself and the profits of the companies serving me easier and better customer experiences is not exactly making a difference where it really matters....You may well say there has been a trickle down benefit in eg technologies around things like mobile phones for instance, but it is unlikely that mobile phones came about primarily to help those in societies with broken or missing infrastructure.

At a more basic level however I am unhappy about what I perceive as an unacceptable price to pay to become a part of the Tech future, namely the need to surrender ever larger chunks of our identities , our private selves to anonymous on line places and organisations where they are not fully secure from misuse by others, nor indeed our own anymore.

So Adieu then to you Alexa, Bixby, Siri..it's not you it's me ; I'll turn the lights off on my way out thanks.