What a funny, mixed up, robotic society we live in.
Recently, Apple, Inc. introduced the new iPhone 4s, with the major selling point being a new personal assistant software entitled SIRI. One of the main features of SIRI is its ability to allow you to send a text with your voice, instead of having to type it out by hand. WOW, huh? And if the person you were texting also had SIRI, the new personal assistant would even read your text aloud to the recipient, also preventing them from ever having to use their hands. AMAZING!!
Everyone rejoiced at this new technological marvel, since it was all hands-free and made texting and driving suddenly legal (and safe) again. But is this really “new”? And what’s wrong with this picture??
You see, once upon a time, we all used to talk on the telephone and actually have something called a conversation. But then we got tired of using our voices. So we started texting. But somewhere along the line, we grew tired of texting (it’s so 2009). So now, we’d rather use our voice to dictate a text to a robotic app, that delivers our words in typed form to a recipient, that is then converted into words and read aloud by a robotic app to our friend on the other end. Great huh?
Um…. isn’t that just the original phone conversation all over again? Which means, wouldn’t it be easier to just pick up the telephone the old school way, dial your friend, bypass technology, and physically say what you want to them instead of having a robotic app communicate verbally for you??
Ahhh, technology and our robotic society!
