While I like technology, I don’t think I am too much of a gadget person. I am rarely-to-never an early adopter and will acquire gadgets when I think they serve a functional purpose I might value. The one exception was Amazon Echo. They promoted it at about 25% of the first generation Echo and I thought why not, buying the device before it was generally available.. The year was 2014. Really nothing too different since then – until last year.
I like to read at the very end of the day while in bed. Sometimes I read on a Kindle (late adoption) but I still like “real” books. With Kindle I could turn out the light and crawl under the covers, read for a while, and simply close the Kindle, and that was that. With a real book, I had to hop out of bed, turn off the light, and then back under the cover. Not too taxing, but when I had already nodded off to sleep… then it became, “I need to rethink this.” There were obvious solutions such as a small reading lamp that could attach to the bed, but just about that time, Amazon introduced smart plugs. Why not? Now the already-asleep me only had to regain enough consciousness to mutter, “Alexa, turn off bedroom.”