Casual
MATUS, VICTORINO
Casual TAKE ME TO YOUR AGENT Every time I pass my lefty neighbors' car, there seems to be a new bumper sticker plastered on the back of it. There are anti-Bush slogans like "Hail to the Thief,"...
...But in the end, HAL outsmarts them— indeed, it kills them all...
...Instead, machines will triumph over man by means of a harmless sounding innovation called "speech recognition technology...
...The phone companies were just the beginning...
...Second, I was asked, Was this a business or a home line...
...But the computer was unfazed...
...Nor do I imagine our demise will be as deceptive as in the Matrix trilogy, where humans don't even realize they are living in a fantasy world created by a sinister cyber-intelligence (while it secretly harvests energy from their bodies...
...I imagine my lefty neighbors have seen this coming for some time now...
...These days, especially, their fear of technology must be at fever pitch (what with voting machines being rigged for the upcoming election...
...When at last I was transferred to a living, breathing person, I was so exasperated I spoke to the man as if he too were a machine...
...You want to report on or check on a repair problem...
...There are anti-Bush slogans like "Hail to the Thief," "The Emperor Has No Brains," "John Ash croft: The Best Attorney General the NRA Can Buy," and "Dump Dubya," as well as "Boycott Kraft" and "Kucinich for President...
...Not that I believe mankind's extinction will happen in the apocalyptic manner of the Terminator movies, in which the U.S...
...military's defense system becomes self-aware and, when humans try turning it off, retaliates by triggering a nuclear holocaust...
...As the Borgs say, resistance is futile...
...It uses something called VoiceXML (Voice extensible Markup Language) and is promoted by the VoiceXML Forum, whose board includes executives from AT&T, IBM, Motorola, Oracle, and, yes, Verizon...
...My line was eventually fixed, but not before I'd caught a glimpse of the dark times to come, when we will talk fruitlessly to machines, as they lure us through labyrinths of questions and answers and we waste hours, unproductive and increasingly agitated...
...Is this correct...
...But all of us should look with dread toward the future of technology—a bleak future in which every single phone call will begin with those fateful words, "Please tell me briefly the reason for your call today...
...Well, there's one that I find myself agreeing with more and more— the paranoid "Fear Technology...
...And was this a business or a home line...
...VICTORINO MATUS...
...Or the 911 dispatcher...
...And, equally important, who is responsible...
...On my second go-around, I managed to get past the "report a problem" phase and talk to the "Repair Resolution Center...
...It said that it would be unable to connect me to a (human) representative until I explained my problem...
...When I affirmed this, I was transferred—to a busy signal followed by disconnection...
...Where will it end...
...How about the fire department...
...In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the astronauts must learn to deal deftly with the computer known as the HAL-9000...
...Speech recognition technology has powerful backers...
...Easy enough...
...On a recent call to Verizon, I was asked by a machine (with a friendly female voice) to speak my answers to a series of questions, starting with my phone number...
...Chances are, you have already encountered this insidious technology when you've tried calling your cable or phone company in the absurd hope of speaking to a human being...
...I replied, "My phone isn't working," which brought the response: "Let me just confirm...
...Happily, he, being in fact a human, was fitted out with a full range of emotions, and so understood my frustration and told me the secret of getting out of the voice matrix: "The next time you are in the system and it starts talking, just say the word 'agent.'" (Funny, since the villains throughout the Matrix movies are also known as agents...
...But just then the computer admitted that my records hadn't gone through and asked me to please speak my number again...
...Lately, you see, I have succumbed to the outlandish fear that computers will gain self-awareness and take over the world...
...Aggrieved, I asked sharply to speak to an operator, then went tactile, pressing the "0" button...
...Given their clout, it is only a matter of time before speech recognition technology is part of all telephonic communication...
...But then came the question, "Okay, please tell me briefly the reason for your call today...
...Similarly, VoiceXML will probably get the better of us and bring an end to our existence—by annoying us all to death...
Vol. 9 • August 2004 • No. 46
