The strange case of the phone that’s smarter than I am

This doesn’t make sense. For the last couple of hours I have been looking at a small box that has appeared in the top righthand corner of my Google+ screen. It’s a well-taken photograph, in black and white, of a group of trees at sunset. When I first saw it, it seemed vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t even sure whether it was mine. Who knows, maybe Google+ had made a mistake, I thought, so I decided to look into it. The night before, my smartphone, a Motorola Moto X, had suggested use the automatic photo back up, something I had done on other phones, but had not yet activated on this one. This morning, I saw that it had added some photos to the backup and that they were ready to share, but I didn’t take much notice. And now this.

I started my research with the EXIF data: not much… a date, October 5th, 2013; and a time, 5.42 pm. Some dimensions, the size of the file, and that the flash had not been used. Using the date, I went to my Google Calendar and discovered that it was a Saturday, and that I had gone for a walk woodland outside Madrid. The photo began to make sense: I often take snaps when out walking, and then in many cases I totally forget about them. Looking at the data, I used Google’s geolocation history, which still makes me think that I am living in a science-fiction film, and as it turned out, at that time on that day, I was indeed in the woodland where I had gone for a walk. I went to Instagram: a photo like this one must have been uploaded and then I had forgotten about it. And yes, there it was, with a slightly excessive filter, very Instagram, pleasant enough, but not memorable, and just one of many sunset shots.

But here it also was, in a much nicer and elegant black and white filter, looking much more artistic, but not due to my handiwork. Instead, it had been retouched automatically by an algorithm. In just one click, it was possible to compare it with the original. A machine had taken the trouble to find my photo in a lost piece of memory, had “thought” that it could filter it in black and white, and then “present” it to me in Auto-Awesome, the existence of which I was not even aware of. This is spooky: Philip K. Dick territory. The next time I looked at my smartphone again, it was 8.38 am, and Google Now was reminding me that I had a plane to catch that left in exactly two hours and fifty six minutes, and I needed to leave the house at 9.31 if I was to make it to the airport comfortably.

I am not aware that I had told my phone about my trip: it had simply read the email from the airline in question, Iberia: identified it, interpreted it, and then worked out the distance between my home and the airport, bearing in mind the forecasted traffic at that time, and then converted all this data into advice and recommendations, as well as preparing my electronic boarding card: all this just by authorizing Google Now. So, as the disciplined and obedient person I am, I must stop writing this entry and prepare a quick breakfast, finish packing, and head off to the airport like my smartphone has told me to, the same phone that has more photographic acumen than I do.

Okay, my car can’t fly. But so far, science fiction hasn’t proved to be too far off the mark in its predictions.

(En español, aquí)