Naturality and Non-Transparency of Technology in the Age of Intelligent Voice Assistants

This article describes the psychosocial consequences of using voice assistants, based on a look at the interface as a tool that allows the use of another tool. In analysing the history of interfaces and considering them in terms of naturalness (ease of use) and transparency (visibility and understandability to the user), we observe that they long evolved in the direction of unnaturalness, but have recently reverted towards naturality. A late stage of interface development is that of the voice interface; one that is highly natural (controlled by natural speech) and extremely non-transparent. The combination of these properties results in such interfaces exerting a significant influence on human functioning.