Amazon Wants to Cocoon You With 'Ambient Intelligence'

It's an ominous-looking disc that sits on a night table, resembling a tiny satellite dish. It uses radar to monitor your movements while you sleep, combining that data with information about your bedroom--temperature, humidity, and brightness--to measure the quality of your sleep. Around the time you've set the alarm--at the instant it senses your sleep has passed out of the deepest stages--it brightens its semicircle of soft LED light to ease you gently from your slumbers. And this most intimate companion is made by Amazon, one of the world's biggest--and to some scariest--companies. Meet Halo Rise, the latest contribution to Amazon's mission of creating a persistent yet almost undetectable computational cocoon that monitors, listens, and fulfills your every whim and need.