Every Alexa territory expansion increases the voice surplus Amazon extracts

Evidence

Amazon is on the hunt for behavioral surplus. This explains why the company joined Apple and Google in the contest for your car’s dashboard, forging alliances with Ford and BMW. “Shopping from the steering wheel” means hosting behavioral futures markets in your front seat. Alexa is ready with restaurant recommendations or advice on where to get your tires checked. “As pervasive as possible” explains why Amazon wants its Echo/Alexa device to also function as a home phone, able to make and receive calls; why it inked an agreement to install Echo in the nearly 5,000 rooms of the Wynn resort in Las Vegas; and why it is selling Alexa to call centers to automate the process of responding to live questions from customers by phone and text. Each expansion of Alexa’s territory increases the volume of voice surplus accrued to Amazon’s servers and fed to Alexa. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 839

Categorization

• SHARE: The Echo-in-5,000-hotel-rooms detail is the kind of concrete fact worth sending to someone tracking surveillance capitalism.
• XREF: connects to: Amazon patents a voice-sniffer that triggers offers on overheard emotional words — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 838; Amazon deliberately opened Alexa to every device category to capture pervasive voice data — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 837; Voice interfaces translate service interactions into low-cost automated processes funneling behavioral surplus — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 810 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Amazon deliberately opened Alexa to every device category to capture pervasive voice data #corroborates (0.95) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 837
• Competition among voice platforms is a race to corner all conversation #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 835
• Voice interfaces translate service interactions into low-cost automated processes funneling behavioral surplus #qualifies (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 810