Machines Replacing People in Everyday Interactions

Every couple of months, I use this blog to spout off about technology. The occasion for this particular spout is that I just got a new GPS for my car. The Global Positioning System is a little gadget that plugs into the car's electric outlet (you know - the thing that used to be the cigarette lighter but isn't any more). A little screen shows me where I am and a voice tells me where I should be going.

It's one of those things we couldn't have imagined a few years ago and makes me think, as I often do, that we are living in the future.

The GPS speaks to me in a casual business-like female voice. I've started to call her Blanche. She really helps me out. Gone are the days when I have to mess around with a paper map and its complicated folds.

Of course, Blanche isn't perfect. In Vail with my sister recently, I decided to have Blanche direct us to a particular Mexican restaurant we were interested in. Blanch guided us to some empty lot on the frontage road which was clearly not a restaurant. My sister was not impressed with my gadget.

Blanche isn't the only new interaction I've been having with machines.

Since the classes I took earlier this year didn't work out, I'm attempting to learn Spanish from a computer program. If you pass by my place at just the right time, you'll hear me talking to simulated virtual people who only exist in software. They are Norman, Claudia, and Isabel. They always understand me in spite of my accent, and they are endlessly patient, allowing me to repeat each lesson as many times as I want.

Blanche and Isabel are not real people, of course, but sometimes I forget that. When Blanche reminds me just one too many times that I will need to turn right in a quarter mile, I sometimes call her a bad name. If I miss the turn, Blanche sounds just the slightest bit annoyed when she says, "Recalculating..." and attempts to get me back on track.

Technology pervades. Who goes anywhere without a cell phone? We use ATMs to interact with our bank and we check out our own groceries at the supermarket without even thinking about it. I can go all day without speaking to another human. And then there are the many times when my co-worker and I instant message each other though we sit only 10 feet apart.

I see where the Japanese are developing robots to take care of elderly people. Is this the companionship we have to look forward to in our old age? Yeah yeah, it's easy to complain about technology, but it really can help us. The Japanese robots, for example, will enable people to live more independently for a longer period of time.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I contribute to technological depersonalization. In my day job as an Instructional Designer, I write curriculum that can be accessed from any computer in the company. Web based training at your own desk at your own speed is more efficient and requires much less interaction with other people. Whether that's a good thing is debatable. Hey, I didn't start  the depersonalization of technology, I'm just making money off of it.

Postblog from the Virginias: George Washington’s Nephew Slept Here

I may write a blog about what happened at the actual retreat, but it really was intense and I’m still processing. As you can see below, just getting there was an experience in itself.

I knew there would be rolling hills and in early November, a variety of colors from light brown to deep red, highlighting the heavily vegetated landscape. I knew that it made sense to fly into Washington DC to attend a retreat in West Virginia, only 63 miles – but at least two worlds – away.

I’m not unfamiliar with the region. I did time in the Old Dominion back when I was young.

What amazes me about the east is that everything is so close together. Yet these 63 miles from DC to WV, the distance from my Denver condo to my dad’s house in Fort Collins, couldn’t be more starkly different.

And the differences are sudden. When you cross a border here, you have really gone someplace.

I’m glad I sprung for GPS with the car rental.

The Virginias were not built on a grid. No road or highway goes in a straight line. When driving through “The District,” as some call the city of Washington, you start on a parkway. The GPS directs you to exit onto a little two-lane road which takes you to a major highway. Turn off onto another parkway going into suburban Virginia where you zig-zag over to a toll way which twists and turns toward the mountains, which (being from Colorado) you suspect is that little ridge up ahead.

Northern Virginia, at least this part, is dotted with gigantic new mansions. There is serious money up here. Everyone has room for horses and every home seems to have a greenhouse attached. Three or four story houses sit on lush grassy acres, the cuttings of which must be used to feed the horses.

I have never seen so many vineyards. Is Virginia known for wine? Sign after sign beckons me to come in for a taste, but I continue my journey, eager to reach my destination before dark.

I have the feeling that when it gets dark out here, it’s really dark.

There is no sense of direction when you are used to always having the Rocky Mountains on the west. Without the reassuring instructions of the electronic GPS voice, I wouldn’t have any confidence I was going the right direction.

Sure enough that little ridge marks the border to West Virginia. The mansions with horses suddenly give way to ordinary houses featuring multiple pickups in front. Vineyards yield to bait and tackle. The only large new buildings are churches.

My retreat is in an historic mansion which sits on a 300 acre plantation said to have once been owned by George Washington’s nephew. I have no reason to doubt the pedigree, but it does seem that to give anything legitimacy in these parts, there has to be some connection to old George, or at least Thomas Jefferson.

The problem with this mansion, though it dates back to the 1820s, is that the GPS doesn’t know about it.

This remarkable feat of technology, in communication with satellites high above the earth, directs me to turn off the state highway onto a county road and proceed for 20 miles. I’m then told by the feminine GPS voice to turn at the corner where a paved road, one lane wide, circles some scary, rednecky looking mobile homes.

“Mabel,” I hear clearly in my mind, “Where’s the shotgun? There’s a stranger drivin’ on our land.”

The pavement becomes dirt by a wood where four deer leap in front of the car just as the road comes to a sudden end.

“You have reached your destination,” the GPS happily intones.

Uh, no, I haven’t. I have no idea where I am.

I consult the directions I printed out on Google-Maps before I left home. They make no sense at all. I am lost.

Long story short (too late, I know), I get Zelda (the name I’ve given the GPS lady – we’ve grown close over the past few hours) to direct me to a Pizza Hut in the little town a couple of ridges over. After driving back and forth around West Virginia’s Panhandle, taking many false turns but seeing lots of beautiful country, I finally arrive at George Washington’s nephew’s plantation.

It’s only 63 miles from National Airport, but look how far I’ve come. It must have seemed a universe away two centuries ago. I guess folks back then knew how to get around without help from Zelda. Or else they were smart enough to just stay at home where they belonged.