The Quagmire of an Amazon Wearable

As the retail landscape gets techier by the minute, one legendary shopper springs to mind: Carrie Bradshaw, admitted shopaholic and tech-phobic protagonist of “Sex and the City.” If the fictional columnist were surveying these modern times, she might have mused, “People are always fascinated by things shiny and new. But as we bring these bits and bytes into our lives to assist us, I can’t help but wonder — can they actually know us better than we know ourselves? Should they?” It’s an intimacy issue of a different sort than she was used to. But it’s fundamentally salient now, as innovations zero in on people’s fingerprints, faces, mind-sets — and now, potentially, their moods. What would Carrie have made of Dylan, the wrist-worn wearable that Amazon is reportedly developing that can recognize human emotions? This week, reports of leaked documents and Amazon patent filings indicate that the technology can read vocal cues to determine how a user is feeling. Apparently the same Lab 126 team that developed Alexa, the artificially intelligent voice assistant powering Amazon’s Echo line of devices, is beta-testing Dylan at the moment. Like so many wearables now, the Amazon wrist gizmo appears to have health and wellness in its crosshairs. Apple, for

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