My Fallout with Google

Like everyone else I depend on my smart phone a lot these days, it starts from waking me up in a morning with an alarm, reminders throughout the day of every task I need to do (minus nagging). I depend on my phone for grocery shopping list, birthday reminders, to the daily news to keep me updated. Read my SMS loud when I am driving, send a reply back when I am busy and cannot attend a call. Also some more useful features like scanning the documents, emails.  I got so used to sending email by phone when on move that I forgot once that I can send one by laptop too. I know sounds like a big pain, but you need to send a mail using laptop, especially when you want to register a complaint that you have lost your mobile.

I can already hear, Oh my God, how did you manage to find your mobile without having one.  It was a tough task, but I survived, thanks to emails which still work on laptops, and landlines which still exist. Anyways, point I want to convey is not our dependency on mobile or internet, but how all this has slowly crawled into our lives quietly, and made a special place. It’s like a person who is stranger when you first meet, then you get to know but cannot trust, still you go around and then one thing leads to another and before you know you are married. You do not even think before you trust him/her now. Relationship with smart phone has evolved in similar way for me. There was a time when used to think carrying a blackberry might be a part of show-off, or it’s for workaholic. Not for a person like me who value her work life balance.

And before I know I got an iPhone as a part of good offer, (yup, I am trying hard to ensure though it’s iPhone, I am not a show-off). I loved having a freedom to get access to my mails from anywhere. Then slowly social-media started catching up. It is fun to see those celebrity like photo shoots of your friends, their kids, their puppies, their culinary skills, and never ending selfies and updates of every minute of fun they have in their life. If your friends behave like celebrities, I thought it may not be a bad idea to follow some real heroes and heroines on twitter, don’t ask who, my list changes with political situation in India. And then WhatsApp exploded, yes it did, and suddenly it is reunion of long lost friends, some of who we do not remember but you have to be still excited. This has happened to most of us.

What moved me recently though was how internet looks after me. Yes, it’s a friend, a mentor, mind-reader, and your companion in lonely time, who knows exactly what you want. I am sure you may have noticed how you once browse through online shopping, and forget about it, but google and facebook don’t, they remind you, they just bring it to your notice, until you tell them to forget it.

 In today’s time it is so difficult to be in touch with your hobbies, follow your heart, not really. You just have to search some youtube videos of what you like, follow some groups on facebook and there you go. Try this, you are looking for some spirituality in life, and your timeline will be filled with it. I searched on writing related topics, and now I follow a group on facebook, who prompts me to write every day, gives me some topics or words to start with. It helps me build a vocabulary, share some famous quotes, explain grammar, introduce me to different writer, style, genres. Wow, isn’t it, and most amazing thing it does is keep motivating me when I want to give up. It amazingly resonates with condition of my mind, when I am in doubt, it tells me every author has been there, if I am procrastinating, it pushes me to give up all excuses and write that damn book. I already feel like a writer, though I am yet to finish a manuscript.

Now in such times when people do not have time for each other, I do like to depend a lot on my friend google. So when I travelled alone to Norway for two weeks for work, I depended completely on my phone, lost and found luckily. Google accompanies me to find a direction, tells me the train timings. Most importantly it helps me translate the language I do not understand, which also help me select the food and verify the contents for strictly vegetarian. So I trust google wholeheartedly every day, every minute.

But we had a fallout one day, I know you want to defend google right away, but listen to my side of story. I was coming back from office. It was freezing cold, I had put in 2-3 layers on all over the body. But my ice cold nose was still screaming and telling me, it’s freezing. And then I walked into the train and it shows me temperature is 7 degrees, on my face. I cannot trust this, it cannot be 7 degrees. Just to reassure myself that my nose is right, I dared to bare my palms, took gloves off to touch my mobile. What I saw next was shattering, my dear google was telling me it is 7 degrees. I did not understand, who is lying here, is it me, am I too old, my body cannot bear even 7 degrees now. I paused and put my gloves back. All the way back home I was in dilemma, inner voice was asking a futile question, can google lie? But can your own body lie to you? Questions all over, but no answer.

Accepting google’s answer would mean I have to accept I am old and fragile now. No, not really, it is google who may be wrong. After all it is a just a human made software. I finally reached home, took out gloves again to operate door keys. I was very much frustrated with myself now, how can I not cope with 7 degree, even for few second to open the door. For almost half an hour I did not touch my phone. But something inside me was pushing me to check the weather report again. So as final chance to my relationship with google, I clicked on a weather prompt, which provides more details. And you won’t believe, I was right, but google was right too. This is just like any other fight, where we see the half-truth, and then misunderstanding creeps in and we turn away from each other to never look back again. But what this incident taught me was just give that one chance to tell the truth, listen to the full story. And here I was looking at a full page in front of me, where google said Temperature is 7 degree Celsius but feels like 1 degree.

Ah, I quietly apologized to Google, I feel sorry that I misunderstood, I did not trust you. I could almost listen to google, “Don’t worry, I will take care of you, just trust me.” And now I have decided to walk hand in hand with google with complete trust, and never to allow a misunderstanding ruin this beautiful relationship, to live happily ever after. They say, it is artificial intelligence, but I can feel a lot of emotional intelligence too.