My opinion is that Alexa and Siri are useless. Last week, I met my first Apple HomePod at a friend’s house. Siri was a total idiot who knew nothing and who kept getting things wrong. I feel sure that HomePod buyers shout “Siri, stop!” much more often than they say, “Hey, Siri.” It was like trying to argue with a cat.
Yet a piece by Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times this morning has the headline “Why We May Soon Be Living in Alexa’s World.” Not me!
Apparently tens of millions of people find Alexa useful. But I don’t play music as background noise. I don’t order pizza. I don’t want my thermostats, or my light switches, to try to think for me. I don’t need help ordering from Amazon, either.
Back in 1987, Apple sales folk had a video for their corporate customers called “Knowledge Navigator.” It was amazing. Clearly the video was Steve Jobs’ dream about what computers would be able to do for us in the future, and how we would interact with computers. The human in the video was a Berkeley professor. The person inside the computer was his knowledge assistant. There was no pizza, no thermostats, no light switches, no asking the computer to play music. Instead, it was about stuff that actually mattered.
When Alexa or Siri reach the point that they can actually help people with research, I’ll be interested. When they can get messages to me without my ever having to talk on the phone, I’ll be interested.
If Steve Jobs were alive today, I wonder whether he would be worried about the failure of his vision. We keep getting cheated out of the bright futures we were promised. The old Walt Disney “Tomorrow Land” television shows of the 1950s and early 1960s told us that robots and automation would free us up to live lives of comfort and leisure. But instead, people work harder than ever, and most people have gotten poorer. Computers haven’t made us any smarter, any more than television did. Instead, computers have dumbed us down and, like television, have trained us to be better consumers. With all that knowledge and information right under our noses, most people are more easily deceived than ever.
I am pretty sure that I don’t want to live in Alexa’s world.
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My oldest daughter tells Alexa to play certain music while she’s doing stuff around the house, especially the Dead or Led Zeppelin. However both girls disconnect her, because they did find she listens in on their conversations. One day while they were in a very detailed conversation about their children, she interrupted with an exchange…they both freaked, and pulled the plug..I find that funny. I prefer turning on my radio and listening to the Eagle, a local rock station.
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