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Do You Talk to Your Electronics?
I have an iPhone, and it has its much-touted digital assistant called Siri. In theory, you can speak to Siri and ask it to look things up for you, give you directions to some place, schedule things, or do any number of other jobs for you on your phone. Last year, Apple extended Siri into is OS-X operating system. Microsoft has its own digital assistant, called Cortana, which has been embedded in Windows 10 since its roll-out a couple of years ago. I can choose not to use Siri, I’ve found that Cortana, though, constantly seems to be listening unless I disable any built-in microphones (sometimes with a soldering iron). Amazon now has its Echoes, which bypass the phones and desktops and get strategically placed around the house. If you have a Kinect bar on your X-Box, it’s listening to you too, and the Sony camera does likewise on the Playstation (which is really annoying when dialog in some show on Netflix triggers the PS4 to attempt some task).
I must confess I fail to see the point to any of these.
Asking Siri to navigate me any place is roughly akin to playing darts with a drunkard and a map. Its ability to research anything is pathetic, and I’m well content to do anything else on the computer with my keyboard and mouse. It takes me less time to do it than it does to figure out how to ask Siri to do it. Cortana is, quite frankly, creepy in its never ending attempts to help me – it is like Microsoft gave voice to Clippy, and even when I disable the damned thing, Microsoft often seems to turn it back on with its next round of patches. I’ve not tried an Echo, and quite frankly I refuse to let one through my door. The Kinect bar was an interesting novelty, soon abandoned by the kids and unplugged by me, but my wife likes the PS camera, even as she shouts commands at it while it pretends not to hear her.
Do any of you use any of these things successfully? How are these things representative of “the future” of home or work life? Do these services save you time, improve your productivity, or otherwise work for you in some way? I’m curious to know if anyone here has a different perspective.
Published in Technology
Not just to devices, but to my mobility-aid and transfer lifts, too. It may not help – but I feel better while encouraging them to function properly. (Sometimes, I use Church-Lady Marine vocabulary.)
Siri can handle “call Dad at home.” That is about all I use it to do. It’s faster than waking the phone, opening the phone app, and either dialing or trying to get the Contacts menu to work with those tiny letters in the index.
I talk to computers too. I say very bad things.
I disabled that nosy parker Cortana the day I brought this computer home. Siri is disabled on my IPhone. They’re creepy, I tell ya.
It frustrates me no end, so I scream at it occasionally. Then large script tells me it didn’t understand what I said. Grandson disabled sari, but daughter turned it back on. I don’t hear well enough to understand what it says to me. Very annoying.
They spy on you.
“You’re an incompetent, Siri.”
“Would you like to search the web for ‘urine incontinence’?”
Android phone and I find “Okay Google” (I know, I know!) to be very useful for navigation, phoning, and texting hands-free in the car. We don’t keep devices in the house that listen or talk to us otherwise.
We have friends whose parrot orders from Amazon on their device, though. I think that’s pretty hilarious, but I’m not paying the bill!
Nanda: “Oooooh you …. jerk! Go to heck!”
There are some interesting easter eggs with Siri at least:
Try saying “Hey computer” or “Siri, beatbox”
My husband talks to Siri all the time on his smartphone. Sometimes the results are really funny.
The guy who sold me my house in December gave me one of the Echo Dots as a “housewarming” gift. To anyone reading this: Do not give these as presents. If someone wants one of these intrusive things, they will buy it. I consider it kind of the same law as giving someone an animal pet. Don’t do it. My sales guy shoots me an email once in a while and I lie to him. I say, I don’t use it much – the lie being “much” equals zero.
Yes, I messed with it for a couple days. I told it to play music, and it played Pink Floyd. I thought, that is impossible, then I realized Amazon looked at my purchase history and picked something I had recently bought: the “Wish You Were Here” CD.
That’s what I mean by intrusive. It will use your purchase history, and probably your Amazon browsing history, to figure you out. And it isn’t the little device doing it, either. It is connected to the Internet via your home WiFi, and Amazon just feeds it information about you, so you are really talking directly to Amazon, not your Echo.
Now, however, I get slammed by Amazon (via emails) to use my Echo Dot to buy stuff. I’ll get 5% if I will just tell Echo to buy stuff. One time it was $5 off. It is nothing but another marketing device for them. As far as information, how often, really, are you sitting on the couch and wonder, “How many seals does a polar bear eat in a year? I wish I had an electronic device that listens to every word I speak so I could ask for the answer, rather than just tapping the smart phone sitting here next to me…”
EDIT: I just got another Marketing email from Amazon. I forgot, they call this Echo Dot the “Alexa device”. Like Siri and Cortana, the name is Alexa. Today’s email states that I should say, “Alexa, reorder coffee” and I’ll get $5 off if I do.
I don’t believe my laptop came with a mic; I know that Cortana is on there, but I’ve never gotten any feedback from it.
It depends. What’s she been telling you?
I like the idea that you can be using a $79 device, yet the voice recognition system takes advantage of untold amounts of someone else’s expensive investment in communications, storage and servers, and endless combing through response success rates to bring in that extra 0.04%. What’s more, that other entity, the one paying the bills, can actually make money at it–and even if they fail, it’s not my problem.
I don’t, but my wife and son use them. If I were in a situation where a keyboard or swype wasn’t handy, I suppose I could get into it.
So I don’t talk to my computers, but while working on computer problems at my job, I often remarked out loud that Bill Gates was lucky that his neck was not within reach of my hands.
I use a Blackberry 10 device. BBizzle cares about security. If I want to use the voice search, I have to push a button first.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FFRoYhTJQQ
I saw something in the last couple of days about possibly giving up Icelandic, because computers just can’t understand it.
Google Voice is downloadable on all Smartphones and its vastly superior to Siri. Siri ain’t bad after awhile either. I use it excessively for reminders — both timed and location — to keep my obscenely ADHD/OCD tasks straight. Google Voice has the advantage of keeping “cards” leting you know where you parked how long your traffic ride will be, etc. Mostly, I use the widgets menu now on iPhone.
I had a Windows phone for awhile and I’m not gonna lie, it was awesome for what it was. Had Google and iPhone not boxed Windows out — Cortana was fast on the way to stumping them all. However, now I disengage all Cortana and Google mics — ESPECIALLY disconnect them from FB as facebook will listen in to your run of the mill conversations and start suggesting super creepy stuff.
Windows Phone was terrific. A damn shame so few people knew that. Rumor has it that Microsoft will relaunch a “Nexus-ized” upper-midlevel Windows Phone as a Surface Phone, taking advantage of one surprising win in the phone/tablet/laptop marketplace.
Not a freaking chance. I disable Cortana on my Win10 machines and never use “Okay, Google”. But then, I’m writing this using Vivaldi and I only use duckduckgo for search. The rest of youse can donate your data. I want to be as off the grid as I can.
There is a reason I did not link that one directly, nor did I link the Apple Scotland video. For those who don’t mind a wee bit of swearing, that one is more fun than making your kid brother greet.
I don’t use voice recognition software of any kind but I do talk to my electronics. Even odder, I name them. The laptop is named Ignatz and the tablet Virgil.
I still have a Windows phone. Three actually.
I was at my parents’ home once. The sound on the TV was turned up to parental levels (these people used to tell me to “turn that down”). One of the bellowing heads on Fox News tried to interrupt one of the other bellowing heads with “Hey, Syria ….” thus triggering Siri.
Good thing the next words weren’t “Call Dad at home.”
I don’t have anything to add, just wanted to highlight the “gave voice to Clippy” line. Nice!
The only time Siri appears on my iPad is when I press the wrong button, or hold down the home key too long. And, the only thing I ever ask of her, when she brightly inquires “What can I help you with?” is both anatomically and technologically impossible.
I don’t use the voice features because of privacy concerns. Also because I’m self-conscious in public and don’t want anyone else to hear what I’m doing.
My children, though, use Siri to great effect. “Wake me in 20 minutes.” “Give me directions to Boston by car.” “When is Labor Day next year?” Once you learn the strengths of these systems, they can make quick and routine tasks & asks more efficient.