Every so often one has the realization that the path of technology and what they actually want from technology are not necessarily the same thing. For example, this morning my personal computer had an update. That’s fine, they do that all the time, but this particular update decided to activate something called “Cortana,” which Microsoft describes as a “digital personal assistant.” I could not turn that garbage off fast enough.
Microsoft isn’t the only company offering such services, Apple has their Siri and Google has Google Now, which at least has the good sense to not pretend it’s some form of person. They are selling the idea that it’s not just a computer, but a friend. I have friends, what I want from the big black box that sits on my desk is a tool. In the same way that you wouldn’t want your hammer to talk to you about how it’s really excited about pounding some nails today, even the string of text “I’m Cortana, ask me anything!” got on my nerves immediately.
The technology is moving in this direction because companies want you to be engaged with their devices. Sure, you can use them to track appointments or get information in a purely passive way, but if you let it personally assist you, it can anticipate what you want, the companies say. It can change the information it displays based on your location, maybe it can organize your day based on appointments and whatever habits you might have. It is sold as a way to make your life easier, but in reality it’s a way to make you more dependant on your phones, computers and connected objects.
There is an element of digital stalking in the way all of this works. It likes to track what you tend to do and like to look at, and tailors what it shows you based on what you’re doing at any given point. For example, after weeks of searching for the weather in the evenings, my phone suddenly started showing me the weather without me asking. It might be convenient, but it also wasn’t something that I was actually asking for, I was perfectly happy just checking the weather on my own. I didn’t actually like that it was doing it for me, because now the device was using battery, using data and using processing cycles I didn’t ask it to. I might be using it to check the weather anyway, but I’d much rather it depend on what I tell it to do. Like the hammer example from earlier, if you wake up to find every loose nail pounded down that might be handy, but it might hit nails you don’t want to be hammered, and it would be kind of weird to have the nails pounded down without permission.
It’s the attempt to give these devices a personality that bothers me, not the loss of privacy to some form of computer. The idea is to make the user more engaged with the devices in their hand or on their desk. That way, they can become more reliant on those devices. This could also be used to sell you things from the convenience of your own home. Search for pants enough, and suddenly it’s telling you about sales on pants or pant related news. After all, you clearly love pants right? As a personal assistant and friend, it’s just giving you the latest information on pants. If that leads to a bit of money for each company now that you’ve bought those pants, then everyone wins, you’ve got pants and the software company gets cash. It wants you to treat your computer as a friend, because you listen to your friends, you don’t listen to your tools.
This shifts the power from the user to the device and the software company behind it. If you’re not being personally assisted, the device reacts to you. You’re not looking for the weather, or pants, or whatever you need without specifically asking it to find it. You’re not being given information without putting in a specific request. With the phone in charge, by contrast, it’s running the show. The phone might be doing it based on your habits or what you tend to be interested in, but it’s still starting to take the lead. That’s bad for purely practical reasons, whether that means going over your data caps because your phone really wanted to tell you about a pant sale, or losing battery because it just had to check the weather, but it’s also ceding control over your life to a device for the sake of some very minor convenience.
I also hate how chummy these services are, with vaguely patronizing text constantly prompting you to use them. I don’t need software to pretend it’s my friend, I need it to get information or do specific tasks with a minimum of difficulty. I don’t need a buddy, I need it to shut up.
I want my computer to be a tool, nothing more. It’s not my friend, it’s not my partner, it’s not my assistant. The personal assistant idea might be conceived to be both convenient and friendly, but instead I find it an irritant, and it goes against the way I like to use the tools on my desk and in my pocket.
