Smart in appearance perhaps but not in the colloquial sense. It's only a box of electronics.
Not really "in my face" though.
This was in the first lock-down, in 2020. The girls next door but one must have been suffering from lock-down cabin-fever, for I could hear them in their back garden, nagging poor Alexa to "play xxxxxx!" Where xxxxxxx was invariably another track by what must have been the dreariest pop singer / group going! It wouldn't have been so bad if they'd have let Alexa play the whole song, but they didn't seem to.
It gave me two earnest desires.
1) I did refrain from doing so: shouting across the intervening garden, "Alexa! Play Gotterdammerung! All of it!"
2) Vow never to buy any such gadget, even to listen to The Ring Cycle. Or come to that, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.
It is very helpful and a lot easier for an older adult to get the information without an Internet search, but it requires giving up way too much privacy for me. Same with iPhones. If I get a smartphone, it will be an Android.
Unfortunately, my current flip phone is 3G and Verizon has notified me that it will no longer support that technology after this year, so I will be forced to buy a smartphone.
Same situation but I found a 4g flip phone that is on ATT's list of phones that will work. I bought the phone but haven't transitioned to it yet because Verizon postponed their cut-off date to the end of the year. I'll have to change to TMobile. The ATT phone should work fine on TMobile network.
At this point, I'm not going to get a 4G because it will be outdated before I get any real use out of it because the carriers will be going to 5G before long. I have tried researching to see what would be the best phone for me, but there are so many that I'm like a deer in the headlights at this point.
For me, there's a long list. Most recent thing is called a medical passport. I am having a little procedure done in an outpatient facility next week. The facility's paperwork sent home with me by my doctor instructs me to go to a website and make an account for my medical information. It explains that they will save me time because when I want to register with a medical office of any kind I can just go to my passport and sent it.
I called the facility and asked how they want to register me as I will not sign up on a website for a medical passport. A nurse will call me and do the registration by phone. Fine. People need to think before they follow these kind of instructions. The great big medical industrial complex's existence does little to put the patient at the forefront. When I think, with all of the talk and papers and bullshit about privacy that I was asked to put my information out on a website so that the website can make money by selling that information back to the folks who told me to go sign up in the first place.......................I have to scream!
Since I don't have a smartphone, I have signed up on my laptop. I get notices by email with scheduled appointments, test results and summaries of my visits. If I needed to send the information to another doctor, all I have to do is email it. I agree that we have given up way too much privacy for convenience.
Since posting that above, my sister told me of an amusing incident when she and her husband were doing the standard grandparents' thing: babysitting.
Although her husband does have a telephone equivalent of a "smart"-speaker, neither are especially gadget-conscious or IT-skilled, unlike son-in-law, who works in commercial IT fields and seems to have fitted even voice-operated lamps in their home.
Sister said at one point they heard a strange sound in the room, and could not fathom out what it was, nor its source.
Grand-daughter could, aged all of three, and playing with a puzzle on the living-room floor. Without batting an eyelid she glanced up, commanded "Google! Off!" and resumed her puzzle as the sound obediently ceased.
This post was edited by CosmicWunderkind at February 11, 2022 10:40 AM MST
Durdle 