As technology grows and becomes more advanced, so do the people commanding it. Children are greater and more skilled computer users than most people of older generations, and they also have access to very sophisticated equipment.
Take the Amazon Echo, or Alexa, for example. It might not be perfect — you are often repeating yourself or she mishears you and starts telling you the weather instead of playing the song you requested — but in general, the Echo and its voice-activated computing is a wonderful novelty. But it also doesn’t matter how you speak to Alexa in order for her to listen to you. You can be rude, abrupt, never use please or thank you — it has no impact. Alexa makes the command-based nature of computers audible.
The Atlantic questions: What are the “consequences of giving a child this voice-activated magic lamp, one with no limit to wishes and no consequences for exceeding the allotted amount?” When you give a command to a human, it usually stings a little bit, and the power dynamic is clear. But with Alexa, it is a cold ask, always. Will speech-driven interface change how children behave?
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