Just as real-life cops started to internalize police-show tropes that were created in the first place to solve storytelling problems, the same thing is happening now with the “virtual assistant” trend in Silicon Valley. Product managers are unironically drawing inspiration from a mix of old-timey butler stories, Asimov robots and the Star Trek computer, imagining that because those are popular, their tropes are what consumers wish for. Then they get increasingly puzzled when real people prove indifferent to a device that behaves like a fictional computer that’s just there to provide overdubbed exposition whenever the plot requires it.
9 Likes
I find it really confusing because I still don’t understand why anyone bought an Amazon Alexa in the first place
12 Likes
i wonder if this is why superman is a reporter
7 Likes
Oh yeah absolutely. Similarly, the only major human character in Ninja Turtles being a reporter is probably an underrated key to stories about sewer-dwellers working at all
14 Likes
The alexa/echo are computers for disabled folks. They are just sold to everyone because it makes it less embarassing it’s a computer you activate by voice.
Trying to remember the last time I yelled at Siri.
2 Likes
sorry to crash the party…
it’s a microphone you voluntarily install into your living room, first and foremost.
Forget the “but the FBI and CIA!”-angle, they still must be angry they didn’t have the idea first. What apple et al want is just having you 24/7 on record, because it enables them to assemble the best consumer profile there ever was, since they do no longer have to make assumptions based on weirdo-data like where you live or what type of newspaper you get - they get the full dataset straight out of the horses mouth, and can infer all they need to create a set of services to diversify their offerings to a broader audience.
Just as an example:
They can infer who you are in contact with, how often, how you actually think about them, how you think about the service provider itself (unhappy about siri and ranting about it to your programmer-friend?) and what’s best, even when your child is old enough to be targeted by advertisements directly, instead of going via the parent-angle.
And who can blame them, it is a voice-activated device, so it needs to listen to everything you say, and that includes everyone in the same room.
… aaaaaanyway, the disabled folks example,… uuh, maybe that was #21 on their list of priorities, but surely not #1.
you can call me jaded, sure, be my guest.
4 Likes
That’s a good use case, but the functions of an Alexa are really limited next to what you can do with the OS-level voice control Windows has had for over a decade. I wonder how many people were computer-restricted by Windows but empowered by Alexa.
5 Likes
I’m so sorry you live in Reston
I just finished reading Guards! Guards! and it was very excellent and obviously written with a refreshing left-leaning bent but I couldn’t help feel slightly sandpapery at being asked to root for cops the whole book. It’s such a powerful narrative device it bends the political universe of fiction around it like a lens
2 Likes
the forbidden device
1 Like
This is a fantastic guess but I live in the county where the Mars family have stashed their chocolate fortune.
1 Like
9 posts were split to a new topic: homo ludens won’t love you back
A post was merged into an existing topic: homo ludens won’t love you back
I’ll get into this in voice chat some time but I feel the way the city watch is characterized and developed over the course of the series is an essential device for pratchett’s humanist politics. By the time you get to Night Watch, you have Vimes rejecting the use of force wholesale.
1 Like
there are lyric videos for songs from splatoon, which are all in made up gibberish language
4 Likes
Hftf combo counter telling you “to much” and “stop”. Let them play the game
7 Likes
I mean, the soundtrack CDs all come with liner notes and lyrics, so yeah
it’s important to be able to sing along
3 Likes
In One Must Fall 2097, after winning and performing a fatality in the firepit arena, you can perform a super secret post-fatality move (different move and animation for each robot) to bust a hole in the floor and jump down into an even more firey arena to fight an enhanced Katana called Fire. Then if you beat them, you can do that again and jump deeper into an icy-blue arena to fight an enhanced Shadow called Ice.
18 Likes
Custom Quake skins. When you would join a server that allowed downloads, so you’d see a file called “nudedude” being downloaded before you were allowed to connect. Sure enough, there’s a naked quake guy running around killing me.
7 Likes
I made custom Karnov and Martin Lawrence Quake skins.
I sadly cannot find them.
I drew them in a shareware edition of Graphic Converter for Mac.
7 Likes