[RonanTheGrey]

This is how these things always go isn't it? We invent this incredible technology that augments what we do, what we can be, what we can learn, and what we can believe...

and then we turn it into an almost-exclusively advertising tool designed to convert a human being into a money making machine.

It's one of the reasons I'm not enthusiastic about technology anymore. I see what we do with it. Every. Single. Time.

It makes me sad. All the lost potential.

[TeMPOraL]

Exactly. This is what disillusioned me about information technology as well.

Advertising in particular is a cancer that, over time, consumes every single communications medium.

[SCNP]

I'll third this. I was so excited about the applications for speech/smart interfaces in the home a la Cherry 2000. But we got Alexa. A tool to buy stuff and spy. I won't denigrate the actual useful functions these devices have - I like to ask Alexa to tell me jokes when I'm at a friend's house that has one. However, it's all the things that come with it that turned me off.

I'm currently pursuing open-source tools to run home automation but it's slow-going. It's complex.