Imaginable Tech vs Unimaginable Tech
Voice commands wouldn’t shock someone from the 1960s — so what technologies are we failing to imagine in 2021?
Earlier this week, I asked Alexa — the Amazon-designed voice-activated assistant, which is accessible via a worrying number of Echo devices in my house — to turn the radio on. I do this several times a day, but I’ve been watching Mad Men recently, and part of my brain has been left in the 1960s. And I found myself thinking: it would seem crazy to Don Draper or Pete Campbell if they found themselves dropped in 2021, that we could turn the radio on at just the drop of a word.
But the more I thought about it, the less sure of that opinion I became. Pete Campbell would love Alexa. Pete Campbell would understand Alexa. Alexa is, after all, just a servant — she’s a very limited form of domestic help who can tell you what the weather is like, turn on the radio, send you endless updates about when your Amazon package is due to arrive. She is, in short, a non-corporeal maid.
At some point in my childhood, I visited a home where they had a clap-activated lamp. This was, it turns out, a naff piece of 80s tech called The Clapper, which could be used to activate all sorts of things (and was often inadvertently triggered by dog barks or polite coughing). I…
