Oooooh Boy! I’m going to go a bit tinfoil hat today. Let me start by saying that I’m not speaking against the following innovations, rather I’m making “awareness observations.”
The following story is partially true.
I don’t have an iPhone 4s. I have nothing against the product, and I would love to have one, but it didn’t work out that way. However, several friends of mine do, and they often feel the need to take out the phone and demonstrate its superiority through the use of Siri.
For anyone who doesn’t know what Siri is…wait, no one reading this blog doesn’t know what Siri is, so I go on.
After seeing a demonstration of search results, speech to text applications, and a couple of the Easter egg clever replies, I had to admit to my friend that it was a pretty amazing app that worked better than I thought it would.
“Yes,” said my friend, “I count on her for almost everything now.”
Wait.
“Her”?
I know the app uses a female voice, but I’m certain that my friend doesn’t see it as a person, it just becomes a convenient reference point. At least I hope so.
Which leads me to my point today. In the quest to make interfaces easier, more accessible, and more human, we will be interacting with our machines in very different ways. While there is no real damage in anthropomophizing our devices (I am typing this on my iPad, Hester), it will be important that we develop in our students and ourselves an overarching consciousness of what is really going on. When we talk to our friend Siri, we are receiving search engine results that are produced by a company who is using these results to make money. This is the same as with Google, where search is only the attraction to the main business of advertising, gathering information, and promoting results for money. In both cases the tool can be useful as long as one remembers the rules, but I wonder with our new search engines “friends” whether we will be more or less conscious of this fact. Will we question Siri, or will she (ugh, it) become the voice in our heads?
As always, I invite your comments, just lean in and speak into my ear.