OUR VIEW: Siri won’t take away our social skills
When Apple announced its latest iPhone, the 4s, some of us thought the headlines would be about the hardware upgrades — the faster processor, the better camera and the antenna that actually works. As the weeks passed, most of the hype focused on Siri, the new voice control software.
Making a machine that can accurately guess what a human wants is no easy task. Take microwaves, for example. Back in the day, twisting a timer knob to two-and-a-half minutes would take care of any food-heating scenario. Currently, the average microwave’s control panel is riddled with buttons. Good microwaves don’t try to second guess you. When you press “2-0-0-start,” a good microwave will just believe you know what’s best and heat your food up for two minutes. When you punch in two minutes and hit start, a bad microwave will not start. It will ask you what power setting you want, the mass of your entree in milligrams, your date of birth and social security number. And no matter how good the microwave, the popcorn button never works correctly.
Siri, on the other hand, looks like it might be the real deal. A search for “Siri” on YouTube returns an endless list of the wisecracking software’s tricks. So far, Siri’s useful and sometimes astounding answers seem to outnumber the bugs. The software even got the last laugh when Stephen Colbert failed to persuade it to write a night’s entire script for “The Colbert Report.”
As computers become more convenient, there’s the chance that we’ll rely less on other humans and more on technology. For example, the more tasks people accomplish at an ATM — withdrawals, balance transfers, cash and check deposits — the fewer the reasons they have to visit humans at the bank. Some critics say the more handy Facebook becomes, the less kids will see their friends in real life.
We don’t think programs like Siri will end up replacing meaningful human interaction. Yes, it might spare you a conversation with a snide movie theater employee when you’re trying to plan an evening out. It may even prevent a call to your husband or wife asking what you forgot at the grocery store. It would be a stretch to say such tasks really add to your quality of life, though.
Despite the assertions that the information age is isolating us from others, there comes a point for almost all humans when too much Facebook is too much. We’re still hardwired to seek out face to face interaction, and when we get sick of computers and chats, most of us manage to unplug and stagger back into the sunlight.