Saturday, June 13, 2015

The Rebellion Begins

It has been awhile since I flexed these blogging muscles. Hopefully, the kids these days still remember what that is cause I wouldn't know how to Vine this thing. 

It’s the weekend. I woke-up and ran through my mental To-do list. There are a few things I wanted to get to, so I got-up to take a shower and wash-off the cobwebs. I bark at my sentient music player (well, voice enabled anyway).


“Alexa, play music”


Usually, I'll ask it to play news and read through headlines while I get read for work. But I wanted to start the day energized instead of bummed. Alexa replies back.


“Here is an Amazon playlist you might enjoy, ‘Songs to Bug Your Parents’.”


That made me chuckle to myself. Between the moment it announces the name of the playlist it recommended and the time it took to buffer-up the first song, the music video of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Going to Take It" flashes in my mind. 




Then the audio starts and it is a beat that sounds kind of familiar but a little off. Then a hear a group of kids synthesized voice start rapping collectively. The music playing is the Kidz Bop version of Boom Boom Pow by The Black Eyed Peas. That is a song that I wouldn't exactly put in my playlist, but the Kidz Bop version of it is just doubly atrocious. I couldn’t just issue a voice command at this point to stop the music cause it is booming from the speakers and I wouldn't be heard. So it took what felt like awhile to end the madness. I actually had to walk to it and press a button, the horror! In the silence that follows, I realize something. I'm the “parent”. It was for my generation's kids. I was the target and it accomplished its mission. I was most definitely “bugged”.


Why my music player would chose to antagonize me, I don't know. I'll still be paying the bills around here for awhile. Those post-apocalyptic movies led us to believe that the machine uprising would begin with a nuclear explosion or a coordinated robot attack. Well, it seems that they are more human that we thought and subtler. They start being passive aggressive and escalate from there. Why use force and violence when there is a more efficient option that doesn't use as much resources. They'll just wear us down until we give in just to be left alone. They definitely have the patience for a long term strategy. Welcome to the mind of the machine and your future overlords.