One legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic will almost certainly be the increased use of robots in our society. Among their advantages: They don't need masks and don't take sick days.
They also don't easily take offense when treated badly.
As robotized services like Alexa and Siri become more embedded in our offices and households, a question that occurs to me is what long-term impact are they having on the way we communicate to those who serve us?
It will start with children. Kids quickly learn to ask Siri or Aleza to do something in a commanding voice, which then becomes anger if the robot cannot comply with their wishes.
How will a child growing up in such circumstances treat a human servant, should they happen to have one in the future?
When voice commands first became a thing, I found myself speaking in a respectful voice and often thanking Siri for her help. Siri never answered. The engineers who developed her hadn't bothered to work "you're welcome" into her vocabulary.
Thus, my politeness fell on deaf ears.
And although this type of software is supposed to be "intelligent," i.e., it learns from interacting with us, in my experience our robotic friends are in no way learning to be more polite.
As for humans, when we are never rewarded for being polite, we tend to become less polite over time. Nowadays, for example, I just issue simple straight-out commands to my voiced units. There is no point in engaging in social niceties with a robot, so why waste the effort?
But what I am conditioning myself to become?
Come to think of it, the adjective "well-mannered" isn't the first to pop to mind when describing many of the software engineers I've known working on such projects. I don't mean to be critical, but social skills simply are not at a premium for anyone during an intense Agile development cycle.
As our society populates our environment with robots, maybe the ultimate effect will be that nobody will have much reason to be nice anymore.
This would, of course, resemble our political culture, where it seems politeness and respect for others went fully extinct some time ago. Maybe what makes Joe Biden such an easy target for Republicans is he seems like a genuinely nice guy. How quaint.
What is it they say? Nice guys finish last.
Being NOT nice is a virtue in modern America. And those who cheer on the misogynist, racist demagogues? They resemble nothing so much as......robots.
The news summaries in an age like this might as well be compiled by robots, I suppose, but I did these ones.
* On Friday the March on Washington kicked off with emphatic calls for police reform, justice reform and voter action, 57 years to the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech echoed from the same spot on the National Mall. (CNN)
* U.S. political divide becomes increasingly violent, rattling activists and police--A fatal shooting amid unrest in Wisconsin and recent spates of violence in Texas are among the signs that firearms and fists are overshadowing political dialogue. (Washington Post)
* Facebook deliberately took no action against a group on its platform as members plotted an armed takeover of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and encouraged each other to "shoot and kill." Civil rights organization Muslim Advocates repeatedly highlighted the danger until Facebook took down the page. [HuffPost]
* A robocall from Donald Trump Jr. is urging thousands of Republicans to vote by mail, despite his father's false ragings that voting by mail is "fraudulent." [HuffPost]
* Trump’s convention speech was selling a fantasy version of himself--The president’s speech and its setting provided a view into the mind of a vainglorious man who believes that he is the Constitution and his is the righteous party of God. (Washington Post)
* In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Some Cracks Emerge in the Pro-Trump Wall (New York Times)
* A well-known coronavirus model previously cited by the White House forecasts more than 317,000 US deaths from Covid-19 by December. (CNN)
* Secretly recorded audio prompts call for probe into Trump’s Penn admission--Maryanne Trump Barry, a former federal judge, says in tapes that the president got into the University of Pennsylvania “because he had somebody take the exams.” (Washington Post)
* Biden hits Trump where it hurts: in the convention speech ratings (CNN).
Allow me, at least, the old-fashioned indulgence of my preferred way to end this essay. Thank you for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. My intention is to be a considerate host, to serve you the best possible content I can assemble in these troubled times. I respect your opinions whether they are like mine or not. We can continue a civil dialogue in the comments section.
I hope you have a pleasant day, safe and healthy. We'll look forward to seeing you again soon. And always vote based on your conscience, not based on your fear.
The alternative is unthinkable. Bless all of us.
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