“I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
Of course written by Bob Dylan when he was twenty-something. Funny how that works.
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We need free software projects to do that. Basic voice recognition is working (see the above URL). I think we should have an aim of making devices like the Librem5 fully usable for blind people. Implementing the Google Box/Alexa type functionality would be a small side project along the way to that.
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Another idea is to make it illegal to build devices that can recognize human speech. Change the laws to ban any evidence in court that came from computer speech recognition or translation. This would prevent governments and business interests from processing our words via computer and storing our words as text. With no legal way of evaluating every word we speak and with no way to hold us accountable for what we say when spied upon using microphones tied to computer speech algorithms, the world can go back to how things used to be.
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That would be extreme.
If a disabled person relies on spoken commands and dictation to interact with a computer would such a restriction still be reasonable?
If a person wants to control a device hands-free? (which could improve safety)
If a person just wants to use spoken commands?
After all, it is your computer and you should be able to do with it whatever you want.
All you really need in respect of the OP’s story is a law that says that “off means off”.
There’s a fine line though. It is widely believed that all phone calls are monitored for key words and the detection of such a word (which would involve computer speech recognition) would trigger the metadata and content of the call to be recorded for human investigation. Is that recording admissible in court? The recording itself does not violate the prohibition.
Depending on the country, that law would probably end up as “make it illegal except where authorised by the government”.
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I always found this creepy vid a fair introduction. I do think the ‘villains’ already control most people today, and they can even harm you, without permission, unaccountably, using just surveillance, profiling/script writing, and manipulation. This kind of thing has been going on for a long time just not as expediently as now with the tech. You get watched for a period of time. If you’re not a thinker you are permitted some space. If you are corruptible, or willing to do the dirty deeds, you get promoted. If you are ethical, or a truth seeker, then you are a potential problem, but you only become a real problem once you uncover things we’re not supposed to know. These could be health related, energy related, historical, anything not yet scheduled to be public information. If you’re one of these smart kinds of folks, your profile gets twisted into something else, and you start to acquire frenemies (the corruptible ones) who are instructed to drop subtle hints to influence you. For example, “There’s nothing you can do about that, it’s just going to happen,” to convince you that you’re in the blob. At the same time, bad or leading choices are placed in front of you, where it is known that you will probably eventually bite. In these kinds of ways you can be led to do just about anything, and you and everyone around you will think it’s organic, although it isn’t really. Know any strong families that seemed to combust or decay over the last decade or so, due to bad choices being made? The point of it all obviously to turn us into a herd to be managed by this hiercharcy of villains. It’s not really a secret, in fact, we’re going to war against other countries that might, if we were friendly with them, enlighten us quite a bit about how to deal with these issues. $0.02
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@StevenR said:
Blockquote
With no legal way of evaluating every word we speak and with no way to hold us accountable for what we say when spied upon using microphones tied to computer speech algorithms, the world can go back to how things used to be.
Blockquote
Except, you know… SPIES & CRIMINALS.
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The username should be @SteveR, not @StevenR:
[quote="SteveR, post:23, topic:27020"]
With no legal way of evaluating every word we speak and with no way to hold us accountable for what we say when spied upon using microphones tied to computer speech algorithms, the world can go back to how things used to be.
[/quote]
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Ahah funny 
But it makes perfect sense, if it werent’ listening all the time, it wouldn’t be able to answer to you when you say “hey Google”. There is no turning this off, unless you unplug it.
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I won’t use voice recognition until I get a Majel Barrett voice response!
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we’ll know we’re on the right track when there is a shift away from ubiquitous electronics for the sake of convenience.
otherwise your fridge and soon your water heater will be reporting on your latest business plan
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Related:
I think it’s interesting that one person here drifted from the topic of being spied upon, to the topic of being persuaded by the same people who are secretly listening to us. Those topics are definitely related.
I used to enjoy buying and reading the local daily newspaper, a physical newspaper and not online. But I finally decided that I couldn’t keep poisioning my mind that way. Several months earlier, I thought I could filter out the truth from the lies and that seemed to work for a while until most of what I read were demonstratable lies. Eventually, I decided that what I was reading was almost all propaganda, and not even news.
Too many people simply dismiss the concept of critical thinking, not realizing what they’re actually doing. They don’t concern themselves with even doing a small amount of personal research, comparing so-called facts to what they see for themselves, is actually happening in their world. They believe what they read from the mainstream media and leave it at that. Some of these people are even close friends and family members. It’s like their minds have been poisioned in some cases. Technology is doing this to us.
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No, humans are doing this to us. Fakenews are nothing new of the internet … this happens all the human history along. Technology just makes things more complex. The extremes become more extreme and other people can make use of it to get a knowledge they never would be able 100 years ago. Also it’s not all a lie what is not true. Some things are written in a wrong way with best indents. Other things are true and get called a lie.
Don’t make the mistake and choose the simple answer. I realized that people who’re speaking about “these are lies”, are trusting in other (often worse) lies.
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I guess, humans using tech. Totally agree about critical thinking and abandoning fake news. All propaganda.
Somebody get Richard Stallman in an open field next to a loud rushing creek so we can whisper our questions to him.
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