OPINION: You, me and Alexa: Smart home devices and sex in the digital age
After months in lockdown, I’m dating again. Venturing into dimly lit bars with strangers from the internet. One night, I meet someone interesting. They’re funny, and I’m doing my best to flirt despite being wildly out of practice. The tension builds, and I decide to go home with them. Clothes come off, things are getting heated, and then they start to talk. No, it’s not dirty talk, they’re not even talking to me. They’re talking to Google.
These devices normalise surveillance by tempting us with convenience and then blending into the background, quietly observing the most mundane and intimate parts of our lives. But we need to resist this cultural shift, and that means having conversations about the role we’re happy for tech to play on our hot dates and beyond.Smart home devices collect immense amounts of data; some innocuous, and some incredibly invasive.