Smart Devices 12/18/2020

Smart devices. They all promise to make our lives so much better. But are we smart enough to use them? There are smart refrigerators that tell you when you’re running low on milk, smart toaster ovens that know what you’ve put inside them and how long to bake or broil said item, smart watches, phones, tv’s, and I’m not smart enough to go on with more examples. Our first comic this week deals with a smartphone. Now if you are like me or John, you’ve gotten rid of your landline because it was just an expensive relic that did nothing more than receive useless junk calls. As time went on, my wife and I started ignoring our landline when it rang and our friends and family only called our cell phones. Eventually, the robocallers or bots caught on and now our smartphones get as many junk calls as our landlines used to get. Ahh, but we were smart, so we thought, so we’d outsmart our smartphones. First thing we did was sign up to the National Do Not Call Registry. Total waste of time. Next option was to immediately hang up after each call from Bluffton, Tenn. or Portsmouth, NH, where we didn’t know a soul. Then go into last call, info, and finally, block caller. Also not worth a hot damn. Because as soon as you block this particular number, whoever it is just calls you back on another number. As the pirates used to say, arghhhhhh! So we made a comic out of it. If anyone has any suggestions about how to defeat these seemingly endless crank calls, we’d love to hear about it and we’ll post it on the site, but until then, just don’t answer.

Next up is the smartwatch. I wonder if this happens to you. Almost every night I’ll be sitting on my couch around 10:30 or 11 when I feel a bump on my wrist. Inevitably it’s my watch, telling me it’s time to breathe. And immediately I think, do I really need a reminder telling me it’s time to breathe? Isn’t that sort of obvious? I mean, don’t you need to breathe to be able to sort of, ‘ya know, live? Oh I know, they mean deep breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth, but still, soooo annoying. What’ll it do next, tell me when it’s time to stand? Oh wait, it already does that. This next part is no joke. Kara Swisher from the N.Y. Times wrote that she bought a new watch to test for a column she was writing. The watch measured her pulse and told her, among other things, that she seemed upset at 4:46 pm yesterday and happy at 9:27 pm. Can’t you see it now, an ad for an antidepressant or Tito’s Vodka at 4:47 followed by a promo for a new romantic comedy at 9:28? The more and more devices are thinking for us, the less and less we are being asked to think for ourselves. Now if only someone can come up with a program to write this blog I can lie down and take a nap. John, who cannot be replaced by a bot, is busy working on our Christmas Card.

Have a great weekend and Happy Holidays,

Andy and John