“Shut up. You’re getting this crap whether you want it or not.”
– Steve Jobs*
Jobs is dead so he can’t refute the quote.
I first noticed that something was creeping up on us when my best friend Dave bought a Datsun 280Z back in 1981.
It was fast, cool and good looking, but one thing caught my attention.
It talked to you.
“Your door is ajar. Your door is ajar” some faceless Asian sounding woman’s voice would nag at you until you closed the door.
And many other “commands” would spew forth during your drive.
“The lights are on,” “You are exceeding the speed limit,” “Your car payment is overdue.” Just kidding on the last one.
I started to get a creepy feeling about the whole thing. Might as well bring your wife along with you, but the she would have probably gotten into a drawn out argument with that pile of chips. Or exchanged recipes.
The evil tech oligarchs have decided to take over our lives, and every day they make more progress with their wicked plans.
It wasn’t long before they were selling small stuffed animals that you could teach to speak along with their little plastic embedded souls.
Okay. What’s the harm? Yeah, by now the little furry thing might be hacking your credit card to buy pizza.
To keep us hooked in to their shenanigans they came up with hundreds of toys and gimmicks to amuse ourselves while plotting our demise.
The “smart phone” drew us in deeper and deeper, allowing us to run our houses and appliances from Europe. It was cool and trendy to show off your latest tricks to your friends, most of which are absolutely not needed.
We recently got rid of our “modern” glass-topped monster of a kitchen stove and bought an old fashioned one with plain old knobs and burners.
Works just fine.
The other one had a computer that was more powerful than the ones they used to run the Space Shuttle program. I looked it up. And even though the stove was fairly new, it had to be replaced TWICE for a couple of hundred bucks a shot.
Then they decided that we should converse with the machines. No pushing a button or typing. Speak! I fought it for a long time, but the oligarchs want you to do everything their way. Or suffer.
Finally we decided we needed a bigger flat screen TV in the living room, so we got one. Now ROKU wants a personal relationship with us. Just tell it what you want it to do. Soon it will buy its own iPhone and call me up to chat every now and then.
“Hey, I noticed you’ve been watching Pawn Stars a lot lately. Couldn’t you pick something more educational?”
It won’t be long before they won’t even LET you speak… they will just issue commands and decide for you. They will track your movements and compile a report on all you do during the course of a day.
AI is only going to make it worse. The machines will be developing a personality. And you can bet it won’t be a pleasant one, judging from all I’ve seen at this point. They will overhear you saying your lawn needs cutting and report you to your HOA.
I have hated computers since 1992 when I first got one. I was right.
Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.
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