Tuesday 28 May 2013

Always connected! Always Listening!

After a conversation with one of my handful of readers, I discovered that there is something about the Xbox One that I knew, but didn't realise not everyone knew. This thing that I knew is integral to the drawing of the whole Nineteen Eighty-Four analogy. The Xbox One is always connected. The console needs an internet connection. All the time. It uses it for digital rights management. All the time. Which makes sense when you remember that it has a camera and a microphone built into it that are on all the time.

The folks at Microsoft have offered the one consolation of not having the console kick you out of a single player game if your internet drops out mid-game. I imagine that in their heads is actually fairly generous, considering the totally unreasonable liberties to which they opine their entitlement.

This nightmare is Dickian, being similar to a great many paranoid fantasies entypulated by Philip K. in his time at the typewriter (entypulator). We're not only inviting the scanner into our homes, but we're expected to pay for the privilege.

I am usually the last person to complain about these invasions. These ones where they come into our lives with their devices, and know the things that we know, and know the things that we do. I want my GPS coordinates in the hands of telecommunications providers and the government. The first could use the information to improve the wireless communications network, and the second could use it to better understand traffic and transportation patterns. This is a thing that I can understand and support. I can't understand the need to have the electronic eye, and it's disgusting little ears in my home.

I have no alcove.

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