Subtle Changes, Big Impact

It’s interesting the subtle shifts in technology that effect how we interact. These happen every day with us barely noticing and each of them in isolation really don’t mean much. But compounded by a hundred, a thousand, tens of thousands of these small actions every day, the aggregate impact will be mind boggling.

Two subtle examples:

Snapchat’s addition of a birthday lens. While seemingly innocent, it represents another form of clever data gathering where we as consumers are paying for free access with our information. As they say information is power, in todays world, information is also money. Read the full article here:

http://www.ibtimes.com/snapchat-adds-birthday-party-lens-encourage-users-share-age-data-231955

The other subtle update was to Siri, a week ago I got a little reminder that Siri is always on once plugged in, transforming the virtual assistant from a passive service to an active one. In one fell swoop, Apple now competes directly with echo (or Alexa). And in that one small way, the product moved from the potential as a mobile assistant to a home assistant.

All these little things happen around us everyday without us barely noticing. As these small changes compound it will be interesting to see how we engage in just a few years.

Ian Chee