Pros:
* If you would have trouble typing something, whether due to a disability like Parkinson’s or simply busy at that home, you can still make queries or place orders.
* Visually impaired? Access to information and services is readily available to you.
* You get directions in a readily understood manner without taking your eyes off the road or the cook pot.
* You can call for help without relying on a medical alert system.
* Your kids might be able to buy things with only a command … wait, that’s not a plus from the parent’s perspective …
Cons:
* Everything you say can be overheard by those in earshot, costing you privacy you’d have if you did a typed search query.
* Everything you say goes through third party servers, so there’s no privacy there, either.
* Background music and noise interfere with the ability to relay commands.
* Speaker quality and interference like static interfere with sound quality.
* Accents and slurred speech likewise interfere with the ability to communicate with the device, though that accent issue is being worked on.
* Are you talking to the grandkids or the device? Are you talking to passengers or the information appliance?
* It trains people to go through Big Tech as the default source of everything. Read the news they’ve filtered, the “neutral” sources they refer to and buy from them, too.
Questions We Need to Answer:
* If you set an information appliance to record everything said in the home or it is recorded as a matter of course, do two party consent laws still apply if those records are pulled and reviewed?
* How do we train these things not to call 911 when someone uses that phrase in a conversation, or worse yet, TV show or radio commercial?
What would you add to this list? What stories would you like to share regarding mishaps with information appliances?
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Check out Tamara Wilhite’s Amazon Author Page and see her on Hubpages.
Photo by methodshop.com 
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