I dont think this discussion belongs here, just read the Economist article and be done with it. It makes an excellent point for Islamist to modernize and "the others" to realize all Abrahamic religions had taboos http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/01/johnson-blas...
despite the criticism it has some seriously cool features like firefly and 'MayDay'. Not everything has to gel in with the consumer right away. He's casting the net far and wide, and keeping his foot in the devices game. That's awesome.
I was on a Twitter Singapore office visit once, and asked the panel "what's next after hash tags?", the hall fell silent.their panel stunned. Granted this isn't where their product strategy discussions take place but somebody should know.
The panel avoided answering. This question should be keeping Dick up at night.
I think it's about putting it out there and seeing how people behave around it (when it's on the desk, kitchen etc). The idea isn't novel, you had virtual assistants do such "tasks" 5-8 years ago (and Timothy Ferris would write a best seller about it), but Amazon's made a laudable effort to build a humanoid to test it further. You have to remember Jeff Bezos has kept Mechanical Turk going for a reason, I wouldn't be surprised if Echo and MTurk combine into something very powerful.
Or maybe I'm wrong and this is just so Amazon can feel special, relevant (next to Google and Apple) and keep its share prices high to motivate human resources so they can continue selling and shipping warehouse inventory.
Glad that it's shared, the Economist talked about it last year, http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-m.... Don't think these jobs exist because there's some scheme to keep people free and happy "The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ‘60s)." Just that not many people actually build things. Currency and paper money also has a role to play here. I'd like to see that many people are encouraged to build things on a level playing field.