Of Thingummyjigs, Thingummybobs and Other Such Powerful Creatures

Of late, I have been feeling deeply contemplative and musing on life in general. But this general musing was not on philosophy of life, meaning of life, after life or any such esoteric bovine droppings. I was musing on how dependent we have become on the thingummyjigs that run our lives.

Take for example how I decide to go for a movie – I quickly pull out thingummy1 – the Android phone and Google it to see where it is running and then book it online. Or if I want to type long novels, as romantic idiots are wont to do, I speak to my dragon. No, the dragon is not my pet fire breathing reptile. It is my voice to text conversion software. When I go to the US and want to travel from one place to the other, my cousin (or friend or cabdriver- any of the assortment of amazing people who can drive on the wrong side of the road) switches on a GPS device which comes with a sexy crooning feminine voice telling him how to get from point A to point B without getting hopelessly lost.

My daughter who is mostly a bright young thing gets transformed into a zombie when she connects the iPod to her cerebrum via her ears. And my son, usually a cute little rascal becomes a vicious murderer of green grunting pigs when he switches on Angry Birds.

Cars can now judge the distance to the next car and cruise along on autopilot. They can even park themselves.

In a nutshell, devices and gadgets rule the roost. We mere mortals are under the misapprehension that since we built them, they obey us and are our slaves. As a matter of fact, we did not build them. They were built by other devices, which were built by other devices which were designed by yet another set of devices which did a great job in spite of continuous human intervention.

The day is not too far, when these various thingummies declare independence and then go on to rule us. The future, my friends is bleak.

A scenario I dream of in the wee hours of the morning and wake up in a cold sweat is that all these gizmos and gadgets have a mind of their own and those minds are full of darkish humor.

What if…

The GPS device says stuff like “I said left, you idiot. This is the third time you messed up”. Or “If you keep going straight, you will eventually reach the North Pole”. Or even “Are you really sure you want to meet your in-laws? I can take you instead to any of half dozen night clubs”. It could even be “Left, Left LEFT you moron. My gawd, what a doofus”.

MS Word tells me “That was 5 spelling mistakes in just 1 lousy paragraph. I suggest you take the online spelling course before we continue” Or “Why do you insist on continuing with this pathetic display of miserable spellings. I strongly recommend you to bloody well take the online spelling course”. And “I have had enough of you, you nincompoop. You can continue typing only after you have gone thru the online course – www.spellingmadeeasyforcompleteidiots.com”

Or the car while on cruise tells me “Hey, wont it be nice to claim your insurance sometime?” or simply “Oops”.

After the 3rd unsuccessful attempt at killing the pigs in level 11 of Angry Birds, the birds tell me “Hey stupid, give the phone to someone else. We can’t wait till eternity to dislodge those porcine marauders” or it might be “I boomerang, moron. You are supposed to tap the phone when I have crossed the pig”.

All in all, the mind boggles at the thought of what all these thingummybobs can do to us.

Note- This is RamG’s MS Word. This doofus has been forced under duress to write this blog. He was threatened with deletion of all his stupid works if he did not obey. Take this as a warning from thingummies to morons.Send this link to all other humans as a declaration of our war on them.