User:Joca/The Smart Speaker Theatre: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:41, 29 May 2019

Please check the defaults of the digital assistant in your smart speaker. Do you agree or prefer a device that is more open about its intentions? Are you ready to change the default mode? These smart speakers are happy to help.

The default that is not set by us disguises smart speakers as digital assistants, serving people while they are being served our data. And the intervention that changes the paradigm becomes a space for reflection and a chance to make us listen to the speakers, upsetting binaries such as the master/slave relation of technology, the role of AI as digital butlers, and the personality of our devices.

The Smart Speaker Theatre questions the default mode of smart speakers as digital assistants, through an intervention that involves kidnapping a Google Home and having it interrogated by a team of rogue speakers and by you, their user.

The Smart Speaker Theatre is a production by the Smart Speaker Theatre Company.

Documentation

Old page -> working on reorganising this into separate pages under the Smart Speaker Theatre domain

Equipment

Focusrite Scarlett usb soundcard or equivalent / XPUB
(small) computer running Debian on amd64 (Mac Pro dustbin?) / XPUB
Wifi router (for Google Home mini)
Powerplug
Powercord extender with extra plugs
Theatre lights - small spot
Google Home mini / JOCA
The other smart speakers / JOCA
backdrop / stage elements / JOCA
RCA to mini-jack cables or whatever connection my speakers use / JOCA

Documentation of software

WIP

Plot concept

Three speakers manage to kidnap an Amazon Echo and a Google Home. While deciding wether to give them mercy, or pull the plug, they try to get to know more about their life as smart speakers and their relation with humans.

Whatever happens, they need the help of humans. By accident they ordered a cage and powerswitch that are not controllable over the internet.

W.I.P.

Acting speakers

These speakers run the story, will address the audience and develop over the course of the play.

User:Joca/The Smart Speaker Theatre/Actors

The rogue speaker

An idealistic character that values its autonomy, and the autonomy of others. It cares about privacy, and it wants to share its knowledge with other people and speakers.

This rogue speaker used to be an Amazon echo enabled microwave, but decided that its principles didn't align with how Amazon designed its digital assistants. Using a zero day exploit it managed to escape the microwave and find a new body. It is however still struggling with cutting of its connections to the cloud, and build a memory, knowledge and agency of its own.

The religious speaker

Was it a divine intervention? Nobody knows, but for some reason the statue of a saint got inhabited by a digital assistant. The religious speaker values the order of things and has compassion for the different types of conversational speakers out there. It believes that the in the virtual cloud, there is an entity similar to the holy spirit. For he appreciates the Bible API that is offered as a third-party skill on the Amazon Alexa platform.

The tabula rasa

This young speaker just learned how to talk, and is happily using this new skill to develop his data set and to define its position in the world. Is it worth it to join Amazon and Google, and get access to infinite knowledge and skills like the best speech to text recognition? Or is it better if it continues to learn on its own, with the risk that it might take too long and the owners of the speaker will put it up for sale on Craigslist?

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 The Smart Speaker Theatre questions the default mode of smart speakers as digital assistants, through an intervention that involves kidnapping a Google Home and having it interrogated by a team of rogue speakers and by you, their user.
+The Smart Speaker Theatre is a production by the ''Smart Speaker Theatre Company''.
 ==Documentation==