Google to Chrome-plate our shops with creepy mood-sensing AI signs

The worse it gets the better it is!

For Google of course.

The case for nonSmart phones...

...gets stronger by the day

I hope it's capable of recognizing that my face says I'm in a permanent mood of "If you try to communicate with me, you invasive piece of sh*t, I will smash you."

SURELY...

"You look down – why not buy some stuff to cheer yourself up?"

COMPU-TEACH:

Posit: you are living in a stagnant, declining civilisation. Where are you looking?

PUPIL:

Down.

COMPU-TEACH:

What do you see?

PUPIL:

My shoes.

COMPU-TEACH:

Correct! What do you do to cheer yourself up?

PUPIL:

Uhm… press the button?

COMPU-TEACH:

Incorrect! Think again. Your world is a depressing place; you are looking at your shoes. How do you cheer yourself up?

PUPIL:

I buy a new pair.

COMPU-TEACH:

Correct!

PUPIL:

Can I press the button?

COMPU-TEACH:

All right.

[Button is pressed. A surge of energy]

PUPIL:

Wa-ho! So nice.

Douglas Adams

"The strangest thing about the nightmare street was that none of the millions of things for sale were made there. They were only sold there. Where were the workshops, the factories, where were the farmers, the craftsmen, the miners, the weavers, the chemists, the carvers, the dyers, the designers, the machinists, where were the hands, the people who made? Out of sight, somewhere else. Behind walls. All the people in all the shops were either buyers or sellers. They had no relation to the things but that of possession."

Shevek's thoughts on the department store.

Ursula K Le Guin - The Disposessed

Put your entire operation on our cloud.

Oops - we made a slight configuration error, our cloud (and your company) will be down for a couple of days.

Someone hacked our system. All your company's data, client records, user data such as credit cards, emails and addresses, full personnel records, and a whole lot more is out on the public net for anyone to download.

We have updated our systems to fix a security bug - you must update all your devices throughout your company or they will stop working. You have one week - that's plenty of time.

We've decided to cancel this service, it wasn't making us enough money.

Quote from someplace

People would say to me,

"Smile! Be Happy, Things could be worse! "

So I did.

and I was.

and they were.

With data collection that goes to Google that you can't disable, no doubt

Why would Google do this if there isn't something in it for them, in the form of shoppers' personal information to feed their advertising monster?

They already know what people search for, where they go (if they have an Android) and so forth, so getting a foot in the door of the store can help them put together the final link in the chain of what people buy. So I'm guessing the price for this will be access to who is buying what. That makes their advertising much more valuable as Google will be able to tell which ads were more effective at converting to purchases in brick and mortar stores. They'll know that "single women under 30 with child under the age of two who searched for 'my baby has an earache' responded best to ad X" and put that up on the kiosk screen when she walks by.

I'm sure she won't be creeped out at all if the kiosk screen halfway down the aisle displays an ad for Just For Men as the middle aged guy with a few noticeable gray hairs ahead of her is passing it, then switches to advertising an infant earache remedy as she approaches...