Day #22: A wedding, a baby, and ever-alert Siri

As I was trying to figure out what to write about for today’s post, I had a notification from Siri at 9:15 p.m. that directed me to my WordPress account.

Apparently, Siri knows that at about this time every night, I go into my account and post something. How cute! She’s being helpful by reminding me.

Instead of writing about attending the wedding of a writer friend with other writer friends at a beautiful, refurbished downtown venue — about how happy I am for her and also how proud — or how touched-to-tears I was to see a Facebook post this morning by a friend’s daughter — a video of her baby daughter — I chose to address this Siri notification. (The other two events are too personal and recent — and emotional— to talk about right now. But I will. Later.)

So while it was, ever so briefly, kind of fun to see Siri reminding me — just in case I had forgotten, which believe me, I had not — to write my post for the day, I quickly found it invasive and irritating.

Invasive because I don’t like the fact that Siri “knows” what I’m up to. I know that sounds paranoid and I don’t mean it to be, but that she would be “aware“ of my schedule is kind of … creepy? A violation anyway. I didn’t ask for a reminder, and I definitely have that capability on this phone.

And irritating because I already have “a thing” about deadlines, and I don’t need my damn phone and Siri to add to my stress by reminding me without being asked, thank you very much!

All this technology! It allowed wedding guests to take photos and videos of the ceremony for keepsakes. It allowed my friend’s daughter to share a sweet moment with her new baby. It’s wonderful!

But privacy is something that we all used to expect, and now I find myself expecting the opposite: that someone is listening, whether it’s Siri or Google or the government, or someone else. (God, I do sound paranoid, don’t I?)

People are always saying there’s good and bad in every new technological advancement. And that’s true. The problem is that we allow it to move forward without really knowing what the long-term ramifications will be. And by the time we do understand those ramifications, it’s too late. Think about the studies now on young people and screen time and how it impacts their attention level and learning abilities.

Hell, all of us! Information needs to be delivered in bite-sized chunks; otherwise our attention drifts.

Or how Facebook has changed the way we communicate, define friends, treat one another.

And now with artificial intelligence on the forefront, how will that change society for the good? And how will it change it for the worse?

As we blaze ahead, we might not know until it’s too late. Every advancement has its good and bad, yes. But how do we know when the scales have tipped in the wrong direction?