There’s a meme floating around that some interfaces are, by their nature, less open, and will march us further into an easier, but less “free”, technological future. There, the human is cocooned in a machine experience they don’t understand, and have no control over, but which satisfies their every need.
I would counter that this is a choice. Just as GUIs abstract and limit what users can do, compared to the raw command line and programming, it is true that higher levels of abstraction, and simpler interfaces, do move the user away from total control over their computing experience.
And, it may be true that voice interfaces, and smart user agents, are inherently more difficult for a normal user to understand, and control the inner workings of, than it is with GUIs.
But I don’t see the evidence that is inherent in voice technology. I see these technologies, like smart speakers, being built in places, and with motivations, that push them to be closed. It is a logical progression that the user increasingly finds themselves at the mercy of a few companies’ optimization math. But it is a result of the business imperatives, not the technological ones.
Speaking to a computer is no less inherently free, or open, than typing at one. It’s easy for me to imagine recommendation systems, voice agents and other new forms of machine-human interface just as open and free as the web, or as collaboratively sourced as the Wikipedias.
There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to ask a voice agent to cite its sources, explain its recommendations, or even take correction. There’s no inherent reason I couldn’t really have a free smart speaker, where I could provide my own voice, or specialized vocabulary, or reprogram and remix as I like. There’s no reason ads can’t be separate from information, in the things that are spoken to me by my smart assistant.
When Echo gives me an answer I want to say back “say’s who?”, and get a source.
When Siri gives me the wrong answer I want to say “that’s wrong. Correct it.”
When Google Now gives me a fact I want to ask “how up to date is that?” and get a last edited date and author.
All this is as technically feasible as anything these systems do now. These systems’ closed nature is capitalism’s limitation, not technology’s. It is only our culture and mindset that see self-determination, openness and freedom as an impossible or evaporating dream in cyberspace.