The Ultimate Lock-in Platform.
You know Siri right? Like it or not, Siri ignited a craze in consumer friendly personal assistants back in 2011. She started off being able to only answer a specific field of questions. She still does. But you could ask them any way you want without having to worry about syntax or commands.
Fast forward to 2016 and we’re now looking at artificial intelligent bots like Google Assistant. What a time to be alive right? It feels incredibly magical until an assumedly simple request falls flat on its face. Another one to chalk up to growing pains but how amazing is it that we have all this technology at our fingertips?
So artificial intelligent assistants are awesome. But why? Why do all these top tech companies want to create the best version there is? Sure. It’s in their DNA because they are a tech company. Sure. There’s ways to monetise it with user data, getting a cut from the data source, and so on. There’s at least 1,000 other different ways they can grow their revenue at a more aggresive pace. Why artificial intelligence?
“Building dependency is the ultimate platform lock-in.”
It’s an incredibly simple speculation: “Building dependency is the ultimate platform lock-in”. Ok. Ok. I smell that. That’s the fart of scepticism coming from you. Sure. I totally agree that the technology as it is today is nice to have but the mass public is not exceptionally reliant on it.
Grab a cool refreshing drink. Have a seat. Comfortable? Let’s go for a ride on the imagination mobile. Your phone’s main screen is just notifications. Your wife is asking about dinner plans. For your own safety, you know you’ve gotta get onto it pronto. Such a convenient thing that you live in the future. Your assistant sends a notification with a few suggested places to dine at. It knows what sort of places you visit frequently because your phone knows everywhere you’ve been. In a discreet way of course. You pick a location and a few recommended time slots comes up. Everything is interconnected so your assistant knows live information of when things are quiet at the restaurant. Your assistant makes the booking and your wife gets sent a cutesy message based on your personality. Hallmark’s killing it.
Cool huh? I guess you’ve gotta expect that when your phone knows everything about you. It’ll remind you to pick up your kids when it sees you lying at home watching re-runs of that old school series, The Walking Dead. It’ll recommend you songs that you actually end up liking. It’ll be so proactive, you’ll think a group of leprechauns surgically implanted your brain into your phone on a drunken night out. They didn’t. Your phone sorted a cab home for you when it detected you stumbling around a neighbourhood of pubs. You’re still working on that apology to your wife though. You’re on your own on that one.
Battery life enthusiasts, don’t worry. Your phone’s battery life lasts forever. It absorbs the toxin from our beloved air, uses it as energy and releases back clean air. The future. Remember?
Best of all. Those “phones”? They’re really just these fashionable things that dangle in your ears and dangle there they shall. We’ve become so dependent on them that making a phone call to a restaurant will infuriate even the most patient of saints.
People live with less silly small stresses in their life thanks to technology and this is just the next step. Perhaps. Just perhaps. It could be better that way?
