In "Not Quite Smart Enough", Martin says that because selling smartphone is very successful, many manufacturers try to apply the concept of smart electronics to another devices (2012). As a result, at the recent International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, customers saw a lot of high-tech but queer household appliances, such as "refrigerators that spew out recipes based on what’s inside, robotic vacuum cleaners with remote-controlled cameras, and washers and dryers you can monitor from your phone" (¶1). Undoubtedly, the efforts to sell these smart products mostly flopped because the "technological wizardry"(p.1) came together with far more expensive prices, and customers considered it pointless to buy smart appliances with extra functions they did not require.
I like those customers, refusing to buy smart electronics unnecessary for their life because they do the opposite thing I did. When I was about ten years old, I asked my mother to buy a digital watch as my birthday gift because that watch was a waterproof one with glow-in-the-dark display and a calculator and . After buying it, I never wore it while swimming, nor used the calculator function. I latter found that I want it just because it looked hi-tech, not because I needed a tool that help me calculate something.
Nowadays, I also have a couple of smart devices that are too smart to use them. I have a laptop, many bottoms of which make me confused because I don't know why they are here. In my living room, the cable television gives me more than two hundred channels to enjoy, but I spend less than hour a day watching TV. High technology may not be a problem. The problem is that people always don't know what they exactly need to use and end up finding things useless for them.
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I have a nice, big 46 inch TV, but I never watch TV. It's just my choice. I like to watch movies and have a good DVD collection.
ReplyDeleteBut TV doesn't excite me very much.
I like Pun's watch story. I wanted one when I was about the same age, but I think it was mainly because everyone else had one. Today, I'm happy to have been able to ditch it - my mobile does nicely for a watch, supplemented by the red clock and timer I use in class. When I eventually upgrade to a smarter phone, I'll probably get rid of that as well.
I like the new iPhone 4s with Siri - when I can just tell my machines what I want and they do it without fuss, they are really useful. For now, I'm making do with my ancient mobile - I think it's four years old! And that's pretty old. I hope it hold out till the next generation of smart phones. And when the machines can do everything, will humans be needed?
As essay question 7 asks, at what point do the machines acquire the right sort of intelligence to qualify for "human" rights? Can a non-human thing ever be a person with all the moral rights that attach to persons like us? I don't think Siri is there yet, but I think we might be well on the way to replacing ourselves, or is it just enhancing ourselves out of existence?