Why You'll Want To Be Apprehensive About Amazon Dash, Even Though It Might Just Change Everything

It's 6:00am, and you groggily stagger to the coffee maker and reach for a Nespresso disc, but alas there are none left. What do you do? Or you realize you're out of toilet paper and don't have time to get to the store. 

Well, what if you had a little button by the coffee maker, or main bathroom toilet, that when pressed would send an order to Amazon through which you would receive a delivery of the needed item? This is Amazon Dash, and it has just been launched this week. 

Other than having a button that summons a new singer for One Direction, Amazon Dash is presented as an introduction to small wifi devices pasted in various parts of one's home. Teaming up with key companies, Amazon Dash offers customers a button corresponding to one's favourite products. This is perhaps the future of the internet of things: the internet being fused with innumerable household objects. 

Not an April Fools Day Prank--It's the Real Deal. But what are the ramifications?

This is also a way for companies to get a win-win from its customers: not only the sale on the item, but also the big data generated from their use of the products itself: how much product one goes through in what period of time, etc.

The question you have to always think about is what is the unintended consequence of such technology in the home? Where is the technology going? What other kinds of information are these little buttons gathering? Without letting paranoia run amok, a simple RFID tag on such a button would gather all kinds of other information. And how many of these buttons would one want in one's house? s

And I can see the advantage of convenience--having a drone land on your front lawn delivering your roles of toilet paper and diapers for the baby--but what ever happened to going out to the store? 

This is also highly disruptive technology, for if Amazon is delivering the goods, then you're no longer going to the grocery store, which would lead to greater store closures, loss of jobs, etc.

A BIG take-away in all of this is the world is changing so rapidly, and technology is becoming so subtly disruptive that you need to be on your guard in terms of what technologies you're allowing into your home, and how your jobs may be impacted in the future from the development of such advancements. 

We haven't seen the beginning of this shift in our world to the internet of things and how it will impact our lives and work and consumption.