Like everyone
else I depend on my smart phone a lot these days, it starts from waking me up
in a morning with an alarm, reminders throughout the day of every task I need
to do (minus nagging). I depend on my phone for grocery shopping list, birthday
reminders, to the daily news to keep me updated. Read my SMS loud when I am
driving, send a reply back when I am busy and cannot attend a call. Also some more
useful features like scanning the documents, emails. I got so used to sending email by phone when
on move that I forgot once that I can send one by laptop too. I know sounds
like a big pain, but you need to send a mail using laptop, especially when you
want to register a complaint that you have lost your mobile.
I can already
hear, Oh my God, how did you manage to
find your mobile without having one.
It was a tough task, but I survived, thanks to emails which still work
on laptops, and landlines which still exist. Anyways, point I want to convey is
not our dependency on mobile or internet, but how all this has slowly crawled
into our lives quietly, and made a special place. It’s like a person who is
stranger when you first meet, then you get to know but cannot trust, still you
go around and then one thing leads to another and before you know you are
married. You do not even think before you trust him/her now. Relationship with
smart phone has evolved in similar way for me. There was a time when used to
think carrying a blackberry might be a part of show-off, or it’s for
workaholic. Not for a person like me who value her work life balance.
And before I
know I got an iPhone as a part of good offer, (yup, I am trying hard to ensure
though it’s iPhone, I am not a show-off). I loved having a freedom to get
access to my mails from anywhere. Then slowly social-media started catching up.
It is fun to see those celebrity like photo shoots of your friends, their kids,
their puppies, their culinary skills, and never ending selfies and updates of
every minute of fun they have in their life. If your friends behave like
celebrities, I thought it may not be a bad idea to follow some real heroes and
heroines on twitter, don’t ask who, my list changes with political situation in
India. And then WhatsApp exploded, yes it did, and suddenly it is reunion of
long lost friends, some of who we do not remember but you have to be still
excited. This has happened to most of us.
What moved me
recently though was how internet looks after me. Yes, it’s a friend, a mentor,
mind-reader, and your companion in lonely time, who knows exactly what you
want. I am sure you may have noticed how you once browse through online
shopping, and forget about it, but google and facebook don’t, they remind you,
they just bring it to your notice, until you tell them to forget it.
In today’s time it is so difficult to be in
touch with your hobbies, follow your heart, not really. You just have to search
some youtube videos of what you like, follow some groups on facebook and there
you go. Try this, you are looking for some spirituality in life, and your
timeline will be filled with it. I searched on writing related topics, and now
I follow a group on facebook, who prompts me to write every day, gives me some
topics or words to start with. It helps me build a vocabulary, share some
famous quotes, explain grammar, introduce me to different writer, style,
genres. Wow, isn’t it, and most amazing thing it does is keep motivating me
when I want to give up. It amazingly resonates with condition of my mind, when
I am in doubt, it tells me every author has been there, if I am
procrastinating, it pushes me to give up all excuses and write that damn book. I
already feel like a writer, though I am yet to finish a manuscript.
Now in such
times when people do not have time for each other, I do like to depend a lot on
my friend google. So when I travelled alone to Norway for two weeks for work, I
depended completely on my phone, lost and found luckily. Google accompanies me
to find a direction, tells me the train timings. Most importantly it helps me
translate the language I do not understand, which also help me select the food
and verify the contents for strictly vegetarian. So I trust google wholeheartedly
every day, every minute.
But we had a
fallout one day, I know you want to defend google right away, but listen to my
side of story. I was coming back from office. It was freezing cold, I had put
in 2-3 layers on all over the body. But my ice cold nose was still screaming
and telling me, it’s freezing. And
then I walked into the train and it shows me temperature is 7 degrees, on my
face. I cannot trust this, it cannot be 7 degrees. Just to reassure myself that
my nose is right, I dared to bare my palms, took gloves off to touch my mobile.
What I saw next was shattering, my dear google was telling me it is 7 degrees.
I did not understand, who is lying here, is it me, am I too old, my body cannot
bear even 7 degrees now. I paused and put my gloves back. All the way back home
I was in dilemma, inner voice was asking a futile question, can google lie? But
can your own body lie to you? Questions all over, but no answer.
Accepting
google’s answer would mean I have to accept I am old and fragile now. No, not
really, it is google who may be wrong. After all it is a just a human made
software. I finally reached home, took out gloves again to operate door keys. I
was very much frustrated with myself now, how can I not cope with 7 degree,
even for few second to open the door. For almost half an hour I did not touch
my phone. But something inside me was pushing me to check the weather report
again. So as final chance to my relationship with google, I clicked on a
weather prompt, which provides more details. And you won’t believe, I was
right, but google was right too. This is just like any other fight, where we
see the half-truth, and then misunderstanding creeps in and we turn away from
each other to never look back again. But what this incident taught me was just
give that one chance to tell the truth, listen to the full story. And here I
was looking at a full page in front of me, where google said Temperature is 7 degree Celsius but feels like 1 degree.
Ah, I quietly
apologized to Google, I feel sorry that I misunderstood, I did not trust you. I
could almost listen to google, “Don’t
worry, I will take care of you, just trust me.” And now I have decided to
walk hand in hand with google with complete trust, and never to allow a
misunderstanding ruin this beautiful relationship, to live happily ever after.
They say, it is artificial intelligence, but I can feel a lot of emotional
intelligence too.
