The New Luddites Strike Again

From time to time I take note of some particularly egregious example of stupidity from the new Luddites. The last time was here; see that post for links to the others. Today, we have another example in Judith Shulevitz’s article in the New Republic on how Siri is messing up a whole generation of children.

Shulevitz starts with a vignette about her daughter playing with her iPhone and interacting with Siri. After a while, the daughter gets frustrated with Siri’s inability to hold a full-fledged conversation and tells her she’s fired. That’s not the problem, though. The danger is that Siri will get smarter and be able to hold better conversations. From there it’s a speedy descent into psychobabble. There’s the problem of Siri’s failure to live up to the “maternal expectations” of the child. Then we move onto the possibility that Siri and other modern interactive devices will engender a slave owner mentality in our children.

I won’t bother pointing out the obvious silliness in all this. You should read it and see for yourself. I’ll say it again to these people: If you don’t like the modern world, you’re welcome to ignore it but, please, leave the rest of us alone.

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