Why We Can't Break Up With Big Tech

"Kashmir Hill wanted Amazon out of her life, completely."

"It was the first week of a six-week experiment in living without tech giants. She had a virtual private network, or VPN, that would keep her devices walled off from any Amazon product. She would avoid Whole Foods and power down her Kindles."

"But she had a problem. A small, chipper problem."

"Alexa."

"She couldn't connect her Amazon Echo to the VPN. But if she just unplugged the smart speaker, someone, like her husband, might forget and plug it back in."

"Then a colleague suggested that she hide it. Say, in a drawer."

"Hill was so used to Alexa's constant presence, the convenient timers and music on demand, that she hadn't even considered putting the device away."

"'We've only had it for two years, and it already has the level of prominence where I couldn't have imagined just taking it off the counter,' she told NPR's Weekend Edition. 'I just can't believe that, especially since I'm a privacy reporter.'"