#22: Information Wants to Be Asymmetrical
If you use the Gmail mobile app then by now you've seen Gmail's "smart replies," which, like every new feature on any app or platform, are both hilarious and appalling until we finally submit to them and adapt, at which point they disappear into daily life. Two weeks ago my mom sent me the autoreply text message “I can’t talk right now” and because her typical exclamation mark was missing, I thought something was very wrong. Even if my short replies don’t vary much, I still want to write them – but I can imagine Google wearing me down to the point where I just start picking one of the three choices and never look back.
Today, though, I still think it’s rude if we’re emailing and you hit me with a Smart Reply (not when my mom does it, but when you do it). I told a friend that receiving such a reply would bother me and he suggested I wouldn’t even notice, which is a great point. My next, rhetorical, question is: Why doesn’t Google at least tell us when we’re getting canned replies instead of written ones? It seems quite deceptive not to, especially from a company that publicly congratulates itself for enabling information to flow as freely as possible.
Of course, it’s obvious why Google doesn’t do this, just like it's obvious why Facebook doesn’t tell you who’s looked at your profile: because people would stop using those features and products, or society would disintegrate faster than it already is, or both. The first existential law of any platform is that it needs you to stick around, and a multitude of questionable means—including outright trickery—justify that end. But then again, we’re just as bad on our own. If I’m running late to meet you I can text that I’m almost there when I’m still ten minutes away—no app I know of will assist me in such a lie. Maybe deception, then, is a skill we just adapt differently to every medium we use.
Reads:
Roomba is quietly mapping your home so it can sell the data to the highest bidder ("Just remember that the Roomba knows what room your child is in, it's the one where it bumps into all the toys on the floor.")
Sci-fi imagined robots taking over the world but instead they just impersonate us.
Amazon is turning an abandoned mall in Cleveland into a fulfillment center.
Until next time,
Drew