left behind
I am left behind, apparently. That is what you are if you choose not to use 'AI', as the many consumer LLM's are labelled and purported to be these days. I wonder what the next thing I'll be left behind by will be?
Anyway, I'm left behind many times over already, and I don't really care.
I was left behind when the 'Internet of Things' was the thing to be using, otherwise you'd be left behind.
Could never see the point, especially since I've never lived in a house big enough to need to control the lights via your phone and the internet, when physically getting there to flip the physical switch yourself took about two seconds anyway.
I haven't got a 'smart speaker', I've never wanted to speak to my phone either. I've never Hey Google'd or Hey Siri'd or Hey Alexa'd.
How do I live? How do I manage to navigate modern life? I don't know, but apparently I'm doing it somewhere behind everyone that does all these things as a matter of course these days.
The electricity company keep phoning me. Once a month or so, they phone to ask when they can come and install a smart meter. I ask them if it's optional, they say well, we would prefer it if you installed one. So I ask again if it's optional, because them telling me they would prefer me to doesn't actually answer the question I've asked.
Yes, it's optional.
So what benefit to me is it to install the smart meter? I ask (again, because I've had this conversation many times already).
Well, it'll tell you how much electricity any of your appliances is using as it's using it, so you can see what power is costing you, they say.
That's not really a benefit, is it? I say. I mean, if I need to use the washing machine, I turn the washing machine on and use it. Do I really need to know exactly how much it's costing me to the nearest tenth of a penny if I need to do the laundry AS it's doing the laundry? If I need to do the laundry, I need to do the laundry. I'm not going to go without doing the laundry, so the electricity it's using is necessary to use, whether I can see it totting the total up as it goes or not. Are you suggesting that I can simply not do the laundry because the smart meter tells me that it's expensive to do, even though I need to do it because I have a lot of dirty clothes?
The whole thing with appliances and power is you're using it when you need to use it, isn't it?
I was brought up during the strikes of the mid-1970's in the UK. Power was rationed then. Three day weeks. I know how to make sure unnecessary lights are turned off and unused plug-in appliances are unplugged.
OK, well, you'll never need to read the meter again because it sends the information to us directly, they say.
So while still on the phone I open the cupboard door that the current meter is in and read off the numbers to them.
What's that?
That's the current meter reading. It's not hard to read the numbers, I say, and politely decline their kind offer.
Because J goes places and does things in the world outside, she has loads of parking apps on her phone. I have none, because I don't go anywhere or do anything. If we go somewhere together and we go into a car park, she jumps out when we're parked and goes to the paying station, and I can see in her face if the app she needs to 'pay easily by app' is one she already has or not. If it's not, a thunderous darkening to her expression passes over, followed by a LOT of tippity-tapping on the phone screen for the next five minutes.
Or, she goes to the station, then steps back and holds her phone in the air, turns around, takes a few steps, holds the phone up again. After four or five different contortions, a eureka moment can be seen, and tippity-tapping will commence.
Or, she tippity-taps, waits, then tippity-taps again, waits, then tippity-taps again, waits, then STABS STABS STABS and SCOWLS at the phone and waits, then STOMPS back to the car and says we're going to a different car park.
I miss the days when you walked to the machine and just put a couple of coins in.
I don't know. Maybe it's just me, being behind as usual, but it seems to me a lot of the things they want us to do differently now are as a result of the technology needing it to change, in order to work with the technology and supply them with the data they're horny for, and aren't actually any 'better' in any way for human life.
Not my life anyway.
post link for sharing: https://skryblans.com/left-behind
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