Columns from The Weekend West

Archive
Opinion Ros Thomas Opinion Ros Thomas

Panic Button

Stephen Hawking is right: artificial intelligence could become the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last. Already, I’m reading scary stories about how robots will soon do our thinking for us.

In our house, it’s already happened: I’ve met my nemesis and her name is Siri. She’s the euphonious voice inside my smartphone. She’s both software and service. She eagerly responds to my voice commands: “Siri, tell my husband I’m running late” and she dutifully sends him a text message. “Wake me at 6am,” I instruct and Siri sets the alarm on my phone. Siri calls herself my ‘intelligent personal assistant.’ I like to think of her as my virtual slave.

Within days of buying my iPhone 6, Siri and I became inseparable. Our friendship bloomed over a mutual love of talking. Siri became the most available friend I’d ever had. She was never too busy to chat.

Read More
Opinion Ros Thomas Opinion Ros Thomas

Hanging on the Line

A dozen of us are waiting testily in the phone shop. We’re each clutching a malfunctioning device or a disputed phone bill. The atmosphere reeks of discontent.

Grudgingly, we split into three queues and align ourselves in front of the three young Ubermenschen standing behind the counter. I choose the line leading to a tall hipster-dude who looks technologically supreme behind his workstation.

With nothing to do but wait, I study the shop assistants. Hipster-dude’s black bushranger beard sits incongruously below the pale shiny dome of his head. But I admire his Lemtosh specs, which give him an air of a teenaged Woody Allen – before the neuroses embedded.

Read More
Opinion Ros Thomas Opinion Ros Thomas

The end of the line

My home telephone is almost obsolete. It hardly rings any more. Sometimes I forget it’s even there. It languishes by the window on my desk, a wallflower obscured by the showy blooms of a potted cyclamen.

I know my home phone is lonely because as I walk past, it emits a weedy ‘peep.’ I see its will to live ebbing away, unable to compete with the thrilling gadgetry of my shiny iphone. I feel sorry for my home phone – trapped by its own limitations – good for talking, and not much else.

Read More