A year after retirement...

Much has changed…

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Those were the days...

Basil: This was the final function I attended: the university graduating students party. March 27, 2019.

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Riquito: Now here it is, a year later. How do you feel?

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Basil: Seems so long ago and far away. Two, three years back.

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Riquito: Don’t you miss it? Couldn’t we ask you to come and teach a class or two?

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Basil: Nope. Not because I don’t want to, you understand. Things have changed. A year ago classes were face to face. Now, if you don’t have your stuff online, and PPTs, and films, and a website with spiffy content, you’re dead in a click. Or may as well be.

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Riquito: It’s a scramble, yes.

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Basil: So I’m positioning myself for the post-covid world.

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Voice-over

The post-covid world may reward those who have managed to land on their online feet. And the Singularity may arrive before Kurzweil predicted it! Those of us beyond teenhood are going to have to devote half each day to coping.

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Predictive spelling or intrusive word overriding?

Helpful prompting or imperious ignorance?

Erica: Stupid autocorrect.

Deidre: The machine takes over?

Erica: It tells you what IT thinks you should write. It has no inkling of what I WANT to say, what word I want to choose. I write "its" and it incorrectly changes it to "it's". I sometimes deliberately misspell. I use the French "chérie" and it substitutes "cherry". It's not predictive spelling, it's intrusive and ignorant lexical countermanding based on a database of misspellings.

Deidre: Soapboxing again?

Erica: All right, so I’m soapboxing. But its algorithm is based on averages. And averages are the measure of mediocrity.

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Voice-over

Autocorrect can be tiresome. But it can be deactivated. And eventually, in the Age of Singularity, the program will see inside your mind and correctly guess what it is you want to say before you even write it. Isn’t that somewhat more disturbing?

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