“Alex Johnson, a freelance video producer in Indianapolis, has a self-esteem problem. Well, not really, but his new iPhone thinks he does,” Austin Considine reports for The New York Times. “‘Why do I cry so much?’ he asked it recently in jest. ‘I don’t know,’ it responded. ‘Frankly, I’ve wondered that myself.'”
“The funny (if slightly unsettling) reply was courtesy of Siri, the new virtual personal-assistant application for the recently released Apple iPhone 4S,” Considine reports. “Siri recognizes conversational speech and responds, helping with everything from scheduling a meeting to finding a therapist.”
Considine reports, “In a New York Times Op-Ed article in September, Martin Lindstrom, a consumer advocate and branding consultant, described experiments he conducted in which magnetic resonance imaging found a flurry of brain activity, ‘which is associated with feelings of love and compassion,’ when subjects heard their iPhones ring. Siri is likely to deepen that bond, Mr. Lindstrom said in an interview. Experiments show that each sensory experience added to any interaction deepens the potential for emotional bonding. ‘We as human beings are incredibly good at trying to find human dimensions in anything in order to create a bond with it,’ he said. People, he said, ‘try to find human relationships in every pattern that we see.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Siri gets smarter with each passing day. We warn you: Once you get Siri, you can’t live with out her and every other so-called “smartphone” just seems stupid.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]