Apps becoming too much like human, & vice versa

Sages oftentimes say things before they are due. So, words like, “Machines that men make, make men machines,” might have sounded like a trite piece of unsolicited wisdom a couple of decades ago. But, today, one only need take a look at what one’s smartphone can do to ponder the full, app-based meaning of that adage.

Sure, there are all these useful things one can do, like check the weather or traffic updates, perhaps even use the phone as a metal detector; but research also shows that quite a number of people also deploy fiddling with their phones as a way of avoiding real human contact, or that a lot more just tinker with them to avoid boredom. So, there is this curious mismatch between applicability and actual usefulness.

That said, suspicious folks might want to keep an eye on a new app that, well, keeps an eye on one’s partner while he or she is dreaming. Apparently, much to sundry psychoanalytical disgust, one can now download an app that checks whether one’s partner said anything incriminating, or just even sighed, during sleep. The Sleep Talk Recorder might turn itself on at just a murmur during the night, but one wonders as to what will turn the suspicion off during the day.

Bung in a private eye into a world full of such doublecrossing, and we could well have a new genre: the app-noir!