One thing I’ve been awfully leery of is the proliferation of sensors of every sort in every part of our environment. In particular I’m edgy about the new generation of devices, such as Amazon’s Echo, that just sit in your house and listen.

I realize that this ship has already sailed, really, in that we all now carry around smartphones that contain cameras, location sensors and microphones. (It used to be that if you wanted to, you could make sure they were turned off by taking out the battery — but with most of them, now, you can’t even do that. Am I being paranoid to think the switch away from removable batteries might be motivated by more than, say, reliable waterproofing?)

This latest wave of products, though, is another level of monitoring: we all know it’s right there listening, because that’s what we expect it to do. And apparently we’re just fine with that: these things are selling like hot-cakes.

Here’s an article about the road ahead — at least the few feet of it that we can see.