For Wilshire Baptist Church
Some dear friends gave us one of those smart speaker devices for Christmas, and I’ll have to admit it’s been fascinating getting to know it and learning how it operates. It’s also focused a bright light on what is real and what is not.
Ours is a smart clock with a Google interface. It’s not connected to any other devices or home systems such as lights or HVAC, so we use it mostly for its primary purpose — a clock and alarm. But we also ask it for weather forecasts and quick fun facts. Sometimes it comes back with perfect answers, and sometimes it says, “I’m not sure how to answer that but my team and I are working on that.” If we add a “please” to a request, it answers after first saying, “I like the way you asked that” or “I like hearing that magic word.” Sort of reminds me of my grandmother.
At night we prompt the device for music to sleep by, and that has been the source of some frustration as well as humor. Such as when LeAnn said, “Play some old-fashioned love songs.” She was thinking Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Michael Bublé, Steve Tyrell. Instead, the device played “Right or Wrong,” a high-energy western swing tune by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. LeAnn interrupted the music and said, “Play another song,” and it jumped to “Take Me Back to Tulsa,” another Wills classic but definitely not something to sleep to.
So, just as the device is learning, we too are learning how to ask questions that make sense to the mysterious “team” at Google. “Old-fashioned” obviously means something different back at headquarters. On the other hand, the Google team must be steeped in Harlequin romances, because when I blurted, “Hey Google … I love you, man,” the device answered back in its flat voice: “Thank you. I never thought this day would come. I like you too.”
It’s all good fun but it’s no replacement for real relationships and being hands on and intentional about how you organize and live your life. Last night over dessert with a friend we talked about how, in spite of these devices and social media, we are living in a world where people feel increasingly lonely and isolated. She paraphrased a book she read or speaker she heard recently who said that Twitter can’t visit you when you are lonely and Facebook can’t sit by your bedside when you are sick or dying. And yet we are spending more and more of our time with our faces buried in our screens.
Every Sunday morning, my iPad and my iPhone automatically give me an update on the past week’s screen time. It’s sobering when it shows a percentage increase, especially when that is stacked on top of a previous week’s increase. It’s also ironic that the update comes while I’m at church. I’m sitting in Bible study or worship — presumably giving God my time and attention — when my pocket buzzes, and like Pavlov’s dog I pull out my phone to check it. Ninety-nine times out of 100, instead of it being something urgent that needs my attention, it’s just another wasted moment that will add to the new week’s percentage of screen time.
God gave us minds to invent and build these devices. They can be and often are amazing tools for good — for teaching, for learning, for setting priorities and keeping calendars. We’ve seen amazing moments when swarms of people have been mobilized by social media to rise up and help right a social wrong. And social media powered by hand-held devices has launched revolutions and saved lives in the face of natural disasters. But the hallmark of those events was that real people got out and did the real work of helping each other.
With that in mind, I asked our smart clock, “How can I help people today?” It gave me a short list from zenhabits.net of ways to affirm people and show appreciation, and then it suggested I clean out the pantry or buy a bag of groceries to donate to a homeless shelter. That’s right on target; that’s real. But when I asked, “Would you like to go out and help me do that?” the response was, “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to answer that question.”