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Whether you want it to or not, technology marches on! And on… and on… and on…
For example, Kenmore, the home appliance maker owned by Sears, now offers a select line of washers and dryers that talk. Not to us owners – no, no, we’re too stupid. Rather, the machines talk directly to service agents back at Kenmore Central, wherever in the spinning cosmos that might be located. Just dial up a service repair number and a faraway corporate facilitator will listen to your machine explain its problems, then make a diagnosis to get the appliance back in synch.
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Am I alone in being suspicious about this? How long before the machines do their own dialing – perhaps even calling other washer-dryers in your area to form insurgent pods?
Seriously, do you really know what capabilities the corporate powers have quietly tucked into your home appliances? You can try reading your owner’s manual, but those things are too dense to decipher – unless you’re a computer. For all you know, your laundry room, which appears so pedantic and one-dimensional, could be listening to you, secretly recording and reporting your daily patterns, thought processes, and comings and goings.
And don’t think for a moment that the washer-dryer combos are in this by themselves. Co-conspirators abound – your self-starting coffee maker, your “smart” refrigerator, that ipod in your ear, and your do-it-all cell phone. Oh my God, they’re not called “cell” phones for nothing, are they?
Admit it, We the People really know nothing about the techo-gizmos that outnumber us and completely surround us. What if they choose to rise up en masse? They could bring our whole civilization down in a nanosecond. I’m surprised that the right-wing blogosphere hasn’t already sounded the alarms about this as a liberal plot, masterminded by Obama and his cadre of Islamic techno communist fascists.
“Let Service Rep ‘Talk’ To Your Washer Over Phone,” Austin American Statesman, September 2, 2010.