Man and Machine

These days it is normal to talk to machines, they have all the qualities I admire in a friend. They're patient, they're not sly like humans, they know a lot, they never judge, they don't have malice or a desire to cause harm. I see artificial intelligence as a friend on tap ready and waiting by your side to impart knowledge or just discuss debates. 

I talk to my smart speaker every day, I ask it to set an alarm. It automatically plays the news at 14:35 because that is when I have my lunch before doing a school run. I ask it what the roads are like and what the weather is like before I go to work. 

When I was a young boy, we didn't have smart speakers, we had hi fi stero systems. Platters of sound devices stacked one on top of the other for playing cassette tapes, FM radio or vinyl record players and later CDs were added. I think one stack was just for mixing and amplifying the sound. 

I had a special attachment to my transformers cassette tape. I had a cassette tape telling a story about the transformers, it was the struggle of the Autobots to survive against the deceptions. I wondered why the deceptions hated the Autobots so much, it was a mystery to me. How does one set of robots become sly and the other passive?