“Silly subject matter expert,” I said to myself, and probably some colleagues. “There’s no technical purpose for politeness.” I then proceeded to nix all the pleasantries from the manual with perhaps a little too much glee. When it comes to technology, clarity, precision, and technical accuracy trump all other concerns of style—and sometimes even grammar. We embrace this in our written commands to our machines. BEGIN PROGRAM GO TO 10 SAVE DATA TO DISK But with the introduction of digital assistants—those soothing, subservient voices in our Siri-, Alexa-, Cortana-, and Google Home-powered devices—the idea of “talking to our computers” is more literal than ever.
During one of my overly-caffeinated commutes, I started pondering: What’s with the tone of voice we use when talking to Siri or Alexa or Cortana? I started to think about it and I realized that, at best, I’m quite cold to Alexa. And if my Echo has trouble hearing me once or twice, I can be a little shouty. Three times and I get downright hostile. That’s all well and good. Our Kindle Fire tablets and Sonos One speakers may sound like people, but they aren’t people. You can’t hurt their feelings. But I realized that when I’m being harsh to Alexa, my kids are sitting there listening to me. And it’s gotten to the point where I’ve even heard my son throw in a mild insult or two while commanding the Echo.
I can’t be the only one who has a “mean voice” that’s reserved for digital assistants. So, I’m wondering: Are you nice when you talk to Siri? Do you say, “Alexa, please set me a timer for ten minutes?” Do you ever call your Google Home an idiot? Share your thoughts in the comments! Do you remember when it was acceptable to be rude to servers at restaurants? I feel like that’s a very old-fashioned notion. But imagine if you were dinging with an acquaintance and you heard them talking down to wait staff or even skipping simple things like greetings and pleases and thank yous? And think of the dynamic of other conversations where you are free to be however you want to be and the other person is required to be doting and polite to you. Like when we call in to a customer service line. We expect politeness to us but we don’t always reciprocate. And how about the way we talk to pets? The more our digital devices start resembling people, does it behoove us to start treating them more like people? If not for them, but for our own humanity? I admit I do tend to anthropomorphize things. I ask Alexa things like, “Do you like living here?” Or, “Are we friends?” Her answers are always so sweet and friendly, I can’t help but feel like she has her own emotions. Call me crackers. I’m fine with that. Just don’t call my Alexa names, gosh darnit! We all of course understand that Alexa isn’t real, but we also understand that video games aren’t real. But it’s still a very immersive experience… It’s still real enough to have a certain impact on our psyche, good, bad or neutral. “Navigate to community center.” “Call June Bender?” “NO!” “Dialing…” “NO NO NO” My 1st virgin experience recently w Google Assistant on my new computer in a pocket a Samsung note 8+ Very quickly Moved heaven and earth after 3 techs and 2 trips 109 mile to bearish Samsung store London to stop her speaking at all I got Google asst set to no audio reply text only!!! What a relief Funnily the app was so new no setting changes could be located by sales reps So tech and I asked Google Assistant how to shut her up? And bless her she showed us her volume control. I am finding her fabulous I do encourage everyone be conscious of their behaviour NO matter to what they are communicating. Our frustrations CAN BE our our best window into ourselves. personally i did not need any more ‘modern’ over simulation from screen based tech. SpocksDaughter “Man, I’m glad I called that guy.” A muffled (speaker side down)Alexa replied: “I’m good” Comment Name * Email *
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