Viswanathan K's Thoughts

“What’s in a name?”, Shakespeare had asked famously. In a world of machines, he’d have been right. But of course, we live in a world of humans.   Isis was never a common name in the West, but over the last decade or so, as Joe Pinsker writes : “Parents ran from the name Isis (as an option for their new-borns) when it became connected to terrorism.”   But what about people who’ve already been named before the association changes to something else? Take Apple’s voice assistant which is named named Siri. A journalist with the same name, Siri Bulusu, lamented about this phrase she’s heard every time she introduces herself: “‘OMG, Siri like the iPhone,’ should be engraved on my tombstone.”   Fortunately, Siri was never a popular name to begin with. But that’s not true for Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant. Sure, Amazon may have picked the name based on (and shortened from) Alexandria, the library with that huge book collection in ancient times. But as Alexa, the...

Tech blogger Om Malik writes that Amazon mentioned Alexa a record 25 times in their recent quarterly earnings release: “That’s a lot. But it’s not just that. It is how they talk about it. They are telling us again and again; this is their next big thing. It is going to be perhaps as big as the original Amazon itself.” -           Alexa, in case you live in a cave, responds to your queries, commands to play music, gets the news or whatever; -           Alexa also acts as the interface to other home devices from over 4,500 brands e.g. voice-controlled smart lights. Says Amazon, humans spoke to “Alexa tens of billions of more times in 2018 compared to 2017”; -           Developers write “skills” for Alexa that are like mini-features. The number of Alexa skills now stands at 80,000; -           Alex...

The other day, one of my colleagues was telling me that her 5 year-old daughter had figured that Alexa, Amazon’s voice based assistant, could help with do her homework: “Alexa, what is 5 + 8?” I took this as exactly the kind of reason why I wouldn’t want Alexa in the home. When I was narrating this to my wife, my 7 yo daughter hung onto the conversation and joined in: She: “Can we get Alexa too? I won’t use it for my homework.” Me: “Then why do you want it?” She: “When my friends come home, I can ask it to play nice songs.” Wow! -           Who wants to use a clunky remote for the music system and then discover you don’t have that song you wanted to hear anyway? -           Searching via YouTube and Google on a computer/phone doesn’t come so easy for 5 and 7 yo’s, but with Alexa, they just ask for what they want! Kids take to Alexa like ducks to water. Like my colleague ...

A while back, I’d written this blog on how the scheme called Amazon Prime came about. I found a very interesting use of that very scheme (from Amazon’s perspective) in Scott Galloway’s The Four , a book on the fastest growing tech companies (Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google). In the age of the Internet, customer loyalty to brands has been steadily eroding. People tend to search for what they want and don’t care about the brand, something that leaves retailers at the “mercy of Google and disloyal consumers”, writes Galloway. To which this is Amazon’s response, especially in the US: “(Amazon) via pricing and exclusive content and products, is asking people to either join Amazon Prime or leave.” Why? “Prime members represent recurring revenue, loyalty and annual purchases.” But if you thought Amazon is the knight in shining armour for brands, you could not be more wrong! You must have heard of Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant. Named after the famous library in Alexandri...