Recently I was delighted to see a typo had made it into a front page headline of a weekend Globe and Mail. I kept the page on my office bulletin board for inspiration.
Not only was it proof that I wasn’t alone when it came to making very public errors, I felt a further sense of camaraderie because whoever had made that mistake was very much a human being.
Not long ago it was announced that an app that reduces news stories into 400 characters had been bought by Yahoo for tens of millions of dollars (paid to the 17-year-old creator of the app).
The app is being touted as the next big thing, the next big thing in turning complicated big things into small summaries of things (they used to be called soundbites). And this ironing out of complexity is all being done by an app that you can get for your phone. Goodbye big brother, hello little brother?
The app will surely come with all the trappings of machine efficiency like spell check, and won’t be prone to making a glaring error in its glorified headline newsfeed, I’m sure. But maybe mistakes are worth the cost of having a person behind the headlines.
I used to be a real stickler when it came to spelling and grammar, but now I see bad spelling as proof that there’s a real person behind the computer screen out there on the other side of the internet line.
The guy who invented spell check isn’t some nefarious terminator robot plotting the overthrow of the water bag human oppressors. No, he’s a lovely man who aimed to make life simpler for all of us, particularly for those who have a tough time with spelling. But now it’s gone far too far.
Autocorrect, although hilarious, is automating bad spelling and turning it into “bad smelling” (I have a sneaking feeling the design of higher artificial intelligence is turning our texts into jokes for the very same reason that Monty Python’s funniest joke in the world was invented – to overwhelm our human senses with humour, in order to then take over the planet. Right, Hal?).
So now I rejoice in press releases that declare “Yoth services now available” and the like. There was a pair of organically human-grown eyes behind that slip up.
The burgeoning robot rebellion may be on the horizon, and the machines are smart, and can spell. We should know, we made them. Eventually they’ll begin tricking us by incorporating machine misspellings, maybe even st7icking numbers in the w0rds, communicating in code to each other. Watch out!
L0ng l1v3 the r0b0t r3v0lut10n.