Like many of you, I have ridden the wave that is progress as much as my understanding and wallet will allow. While I may not be the first on the block to adopt every new technology that presents itself (I'm looking at you, Google Glasses), I have tried to keep abreast of those cutting-edge developments that migrate into the consumer landscape, and adopt those that offer some unique appeal. Some had staying power, others not so much. And the castoffs stuffed into the corners of our basement are a roadmap detailing successes, failures, and just as likely, the oh-so-short lifespans of those advances.
Most have been evolutionary if not revolutionary. Take a simple thing like my address book. I first had a little black book in which I dutifully kept track of friends, family and business connections. That went from a hard bound diary with scribbles, barely legible notes and cross-outs, to a miniature loose-leaf binder, whose neatly printed pages came from a computer program where I easily updated the data. Then I got a Zaurus, which was a kind of miniature electronic Rolodex that I could put in my backpack. After that came a Visor, the same basic thing in a smaller package. Eventually all that info moved to a phone, first a flip version, then a smart one. Check the box in the back of my office and you can find all those predecessors, useful if you need to look up the phone number of the plumber we had it in 1992.
So many of those advances seemed almost wonderous when we first adopted them. To go anywhere you used to have to consult one of the many maps you had acquired. But GPS? Plug in an address, and turn by turn instructions guided you directly to that never-before-been-to restaurant or store. To watch a TV show you were going to miss you had to figure out how to program a VCR. But streaming? Anything you want to watch is available at any time with a click, and increasingly, by just saying it out loud. To get a hold of someone not home you could ping their pager and then stand by for them to find a phone to call you back. But text? Asynchronous conversations now go on and on across time zones and geographies, complete with animated accents.
But we may be hitting saturation, defined as the point where nothing else can be added or absorbed. We each have probably more electronic gadgets and associated apps than we should, to the point that they're stepping on each other. We get up in the morning and ask Alexa the weather, then check our phone for the same, punch it up on our iPad, while noticing the readout on the smart thermostat as we pass by. It's like we're doctor shopping for a diagnosis, asking around to find a forecast that matches the outfit we want to wear.
It's almost as if we don't believe the tools we've been given. That's because each is based on a unique system sporting similar yet different inputs, and so the outputs vary. None are wrong, but none are the empirical truth. It's the same as cooking. When I go to make a new recipe I can find literally a hundred variations of the same. Just this week The New York Times published an article entitled "Our 21 Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes." Best? Doesn't that mean that there should be just one? So much for being the preeminent paper of record.
And now I have multiple electronic assistants that, if not fighting with each other, at least have different opinions on everything, even the time. I wanted to set a clock for the cake I was baking, and due to my mumbling and stumbling, I inadvertently set three devices a'counting down. However, each was slightly different from the other, so at (roughly) the appointed moment they all chimed, not in union but in succession. It sounded as if the kitchen was nuclear attack.
Right now it's Siri and Alexa offering suggestions, but soon it will be Gemini and CoPilot not asking but telling. And in that environment there can only be one leader. Writer and visionary Isaac Asimov's "Three Rules of Robotics" were 1) Don't Harm Humans, 2) Obey Orders, and 3) Protect Yourself. Right now those guys can only open the car door. But once they take the wheel? Let's hope they remember the right order of those rules.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford has too many things with keyboards and screens. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.
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