Hmmm, I Don’t Know That One
Why I Haven’t Embraced the Digital Assistant Craze. Yet.
For most of the last 40 years, I was what the marketers called an early adopter. What this means in practical terms is, I paid $800 each for a 300 baud modem (Google it, kiddies) and a first-gen cellular telephone. Yes, that’s what we called them back then. At twenty cents a minute, we probably should have come up with a shorter name. I paid $2,000 for a dot matrix printer. I won’t tell you what the computer it was hooked up to via a parallel cable cost. I owned a Palm Phone, eight years before the first iPhone.
But during my last five years or so working and all my retired life, I have slowed down the tech acquisition. New tech doesn’t come out every year or two; it comes out every week or two. I can no longer keep up and honestly, no longer want to. I have what I need. I wrote about some of that here.
I have to admit, I was intrigued when the personal assistants came out. Watching the TV commercial where the guy says, “Alexa, turn on the light.” Of course, I half expected Alexa to answer, “The light right next to your elbow?” But, no, Alexa jumped right in, “Which light would you like me to turn on?”
“Uh, the light right next to my elbow.”
