My Bad! Me and technology

 

“So, what is next that you are planning to write about?” asked my brother-in-law. “Ummmm…well… haven’t really thought about it,” I was about to say but then realized, wouldn’t it be a dumb answer for someone, who wants to make her ‘career’ in writing!!!! The fact that I hadn’t written anything in the last few days, made it more ‘acute’ for me.  So, I changed the answer to, “Actually I have way too many threads of ideas but don’t know which one to develop,”!!! But boy.. did he stop there! He delved deeper, “ OK what kind of ideas,” I was caught off guard, but to save my dignity and to give the façade that I indeed had thought of few things, I went like, “ I was thinking to write about the social standing of men and women and how men consider position as their power and how they misuse it,” obviously that was my ‘two min noodles’ of thinking, inspired by the ongoing movement. And then as if struck by the lightening, I segued it to, “….and then there is this AI (Artificial Intelligence), I am quite intrigued about. Want to write about its effect on the day to day life,” I had suddenly recalled that it would be these stuff that would interest him, being in the R&D team of a company in the USA, plus maybe I shall be purged of being ignorant of all the technological advancements!

“Oh, that sounds interesting,” the text glimmered on my WhatsApp! My pupil by then had expanded enough upon the realization, that I might have to write one on that, since he was a follower of my page! Oh, come on, I couldn’t afford to keep him in the wrong book.  Who else was going to get my Irish crème bottles from the duty-free next time. I could not have trusted anyone else to bring the other ‘forbidden apples’ either! So, I decided to go with the flow.  “You can write about it from the user’s perspective, the problems and their solution,” he said, “hmmm …Right, actually yeah this is a great idea, this is it!!! I am going to write on this, I mean don’t you feel weird about telling a machine to switch your light on/off, to lock your door and to do stuff,”

“Yeah, this needs to grow on you,” he said. And before I could give him the chance to consolidate his opinion about my tech knowledge, I added, “And yeah there is no warmth,”. Was I surprised to see “hehehe” on my WhatsApp!!!!!! My bad!

But I took it as a challenge and decided to write about it, my ‘technological handicap’ notwithstanding. I decided, henceforth I shall not just put things in the virtual cart and tell my husband to pay for them, because I felt terrible about feeding those numbers, I shall rather complete the procedure myself. And I decided that I shall use dictation software to write my blogs and mails, instead of typing. And only Alexa shall have the right to switch on the light of my room!

“Alexa, switch on the light,” I commanded. The blue circle appeared. “I do not understand it,” and all these days I had been thinking that I had acquired at least a hint of American accent after talking to all my relatives overseas!! Obviously, Alexa thought otherwise.

I changed the setting to Indian accent. “Alexa, switch on the light,” The blue circle again. “I do not understand it,” was the answer. Maybe it was getting confused with the TV sound in the background. I searched for the remote and muted it and finally my room got the ‘light of the day’.  I decided, next time I shall just go to the switch board and switch on the light. Simple!

For shopping list, don’t even get me started on that! All the time you might not need tissue papers, you also need ‘heeng’ and ‘kalaunji’.

Meanwhile, Innovative people out there, if you want more business, get your Amazon Echo or Google Home  to adapt to the vernacular. We give you good business, don’t we?

The dictation software too, seemed to sniff out my ‘technological prowess’ and refused to write correctly at one go. Only about 50 percent was coming out correctly on the screen! I went back to my ten-year-old Dell and ahh..typing on the ‘Word’ felt like homecoming! For shopping online, I have kept it on hold till a ‘swipe facility’ comes on the smart phone. (Start-ups, are you listening!) But what am I going to tell my brother-in- law! Alright, it pays to be honest, didn’t we grow up learning this adage! I shall tell him that I will surely write about it once I familiarize myself with it.

And I promise the same to my readers!  😊

Copyrights © Aradhana Mishra

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4 comments

  1. Well written.love the humour n exclamations!! n ofcourse we all are on the same boat with our AI….

    1. Thank you Arti. Getting the humour too is a talent and I must compliment you for that ! Thank you for the nice comment as well! 🙂

    1. Thank you Shishir.”Better a witty fool than a foolish wit” …said Shakespeare! 😀 😀

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