I am not tickled by tech, or being recorded

Disclaimer: I’m a tech laggard, and I studiously stay away from reading up frequent upgrade reports. Forbidden Fruit has launched yet another new (version of) phone or tablet or a South Korean giant has released something equally compelling or Amazon has come out with Alexa that promises to do all your thinking (and doing) for you — that kind of stuff puts me to sleep instantly… I don’t need the Fitbit sleep monitor to assess my claim.

But even I got a teeny-weeny bit interested when I heard Facebook was in muddy waters recently because of alleged claims of data mining — for dubious reasons obviously. I also indulged in a few giggles when I heard how Twitter — the social media platform that shapes agendas and drives change in the new millennium — has now been accused of being flush with fake-tards. Apparently, one of the ‘most followed’ people in the world, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been found to have more than half his following under a cloud (according to some websites, Twitter has since issued a statement saying the news about fake followers is all fake news — but I really don’t know what’s fake and what’s not any more).

I need to add I’m not singling out Facebook and/or Twitter here; in my shallow — and very disinterested — interpretation of methodological science, I consider them to be part of the behemoth that modern-day technology is.

But however much I try to wriggle out of the everyday tech trap (I only have a couple of apps on my phone: a food delivery one and a taxi booking one; I don’t have WiFi at home; I don’t do Net banking; I never make payments online — in fact, I hardly ever use my credit/debit card; I find the prospect of an ‘intelligent’ refrigerator telling me I’ve run out of dairy extremely off-putting; etc etc), I find being an outlier doesn’t absolve me of the tetchy tech baggage that’s become an eco-system.

Sometime back, a colleague regaled me with positive stories on rosemary oil. “It’s a wonder oil — but so hard to source,” she’d said. That evening, I ran an online search for ‘rosemary oil’ on my phone, and came across an e-tail site that delivers a particular brand of rosemary oil. I hovered around the photo, checked out its price point, and wondered vaguely if I should place an order. Then, something else came up and I promptly forgot about the oily slick. The next time when I was online, I started getting bombarded with rosemary oil “offers” — from all over the world. Here I was looking up a story on the situation in Syria, and there are pop-ups at every conceivable corner on rosemary oil retail.

Whenever I watch something on YouTube — which is rarely — I get recommendations on what I should watch next. I mean, really, how does YouTube believe it has my viewing habits figured out down to a pat?

Whenever I take a photo on my phone (and these days, is there any other way of taking photos?), it gets stored in some larger Google memory only to land in my mail when I’ve all but forgotten about the embarrassing visual. I get a notification, which reads along the lines of: “In case you forgot, here’s what you’ve been up to…”

I find it strange that at a time when we humans are fighting for privacy rights like never before, we are such cop-outs when it comes to technology stalking us. Big brother is watching us — and yet we are so complacent, even as we get factory fitted into algorithms.

When I was in Delhi a couple of weeks ago, the first thing a friend proudly informed me was he has a new “companion” in his life. Alexa.

“Girlfriend?” I asked excitedly (like I mentioned earlier, my memory is like a sieve when it comes to Amazon updates).

“No, silly,” he said. “Alexa is an ‘intelligent personal assistant’ by Amazon, and she’s better than any girlfriend. She knows exactly what I want… even better, she does exactly what I ask her do to — no questions asked…” “And you don’t find that creepy? And mindless?” “Why? She’s made my life a whole lot easier. I don’t have to look up Kishore Kumar songs on my playlist any more — I simply request her to play them for me. Or if I want the news of the day, she gives me the toptrending list — and then reads them out to me. If I want to take you out for dinner, she’ll identify the best restaurants keeping in mind your dietary preferences and travel time from point A to point B… she can even book an Uber for you… and then…”

“Okay, okay, stop already, I’m finding this very disturbing,” I tried to break this interface.

“You know, you’re way too anti-tech… Hey, why don’t you come over home, and I’ll introduce you to Alexa?”

I actually went over one day — not because I wanted to meet Alexa, but because I was in the neighbourhood. Naturally, I had to meet the plain-faced Alexa. “Most unimpressive,” I sighed.

“You haven’t seen her in action,” my friend retorted. He rattled out a list of ‘instructions’: “play this kind of music,” “tell us about the traffic situation in Connaught Place,” “tell me who’s the President of Rwanda” and so on and so forth, and Alexa kept responding, on the ball, 100 per cent correct — in a deadly boring neutral accent monotone. “May I?” it was my turn. “Be my guest,” the gracious host was most obliging. “Alexa, can you shut up?” To her credit, Alexa did shut up. And it was wonderful to be technologically disengaged.