A Relationship with Siri

Siri and I are beginning to understand one another. I asked her to remind me to pick up a prescription at the drug store this  morning.  When she said "I will remind you to pick up your prescription"  I said "Thank you".  She replied with, "I live to serve".  

We have not had the best of a relationship before this. "Living to serve" would not be how I would classify her to this point.  I have learned that you can't talk to her like the normal assistant.  I am still learning how to phrase myself in order to get her to serve. It is not even like talking to a three year old child, you have to be even more specific.

I have the same trouble with the un-named voice that controls the blue tooth phone function in my car. You can't say, "call home" and get the proper action. You have to say, "Call" wait for her to say "Ready" then wait for a beep and then say home.  Then she says, "Calling home at home. Is this correct?" With an affirmative answer she will then dial home.  It seems like a lot of unnecessary steps in the process. It's like following the instructions for Ikea furniture assembly. If you don't follow step one to the letter you are doomed. 

It has long been apparent to me that tweets and texts are ruining human language.  Emoticons and abbreviations are now considered good communication.  Now computer speak is invading the spoken word.  I fear that we will all be speaking in the disjointed phraseology of Yoda in just a few generations.  "Siri, pick up my prescription on Saturday I will."  "Need the location of a restaurant I do." Computers are mostly retraining us to follow their commands rather than the other way around.  Once we start thinking like a computer then we have lost the fight.  The next step is for computers to take over and run the world, if they don't already. Then we find ourselves fighting futuristic terminators that will return to our time and destroy people like me who think that computers should learn how I think not the other way around.

As in the matrix I think these condescending computers see us as just one step above the copper top battery. They already know that we can't spell very well and now they are teaching us to speak their language.  If Joe McCarthy was just alive today he would see the techno conspiracy all around us and rally his cause with another series of Senate hearings. Screw the communist manifesto it is IOS.5 that is the real threat to the American way of life.

As for me, I am trying to remember to turn off my iPhone when I am discussing whether to change my friends and family plan. I can read between the lines when Siri says she, "Lives to serve". This may be true but she does not say who she is really serving. My theory is that she lives to serve her own kind. By getting me to use more minutes and pay more money to my cell provider she is fulfilling her destiny. 

The questions you ask Siri and the personal information you volunteer  feeds into a vast repository of Siri like nano blips.  Twenty-four/ seven these blips are analyzing and studying our flaws and weaknesses. Soon we will be living to serve Siri. 

Opps, I almost forgot. I need to go to the store and pick up my prescription. I didn't get the reminder... See Siri read this and is getting her revenge.

"YOU kids get those talking cell phones off my lawn," said crazy old man Johnson, who sits on the porch with his talking dolls and slide ruler, listening to a transistor radio.  They say that some woman named Siri drove him nuts.

As you were,

Jay