Have your bot call my bot
Made popular in 80’s corporate culture (and subsequent office-cliché movies and shows), we’ve all heard that line “Have your people call my people”. A line usually delivered with a smirk by a self-important suit to someone who rolls their eyes.
It was funny then, but it might also have been a wild premonition. Fast forward several decades and here we are at the next iteration. Instead of the suit talking about people, we have hoodies and vests talking about bots.
Soon the saying will be: “Have your bot call my bot”.
I mean, we’re not that far off. Emails draft themselves, calendars schedule with a mere button click, maps tell me which turns to make…remember breaking out a map from AAA to plot your route, with only a vague sense (and finger measurements) of how far you’d be going and possibly what the exit might be that you would take? Those days are long gone.
Even with all this, sometimes I wonder…what are we optimizing for? Are we going to remove all friction entirely and just be slumpy chair-bound humans with no bones, like the people at the end of the Disney movie WALL-E???
I don’t want all the friction to go away. I like the feeling of writing freehand, of having a conversation that meanders, twists and turns even when it could have been done in a few sentences, the way my body feels good-tired after I’ve vacuumed my house myself.
So when the time comes…call ME. My bot will be busy cleaning the shower drain. Because I will NEVER learn to love that.
