I’d been feeling a bit mechanical lately. Like my essential communication is
abbreviated and reduced to reciting pin numbers, Social Security digits and
snarks (snarky remarks) of 140 characters or less. I don’t interact. I interface, with devices much smarter
than me: tablet, laptop, Metrocard
vending machine. I asked a human
bank teller to make a simple correction to my account and was told, “that can
only be done by phone.” I looked
at the cobwebs growing on several bank officers sitting behind me and tamped
down my raging woman, raring to tell somebody - anybody how to run things 2%
better for my convenience.
It’s official. I now automatically respond to an assortment
of electronic beeps, buzzes and alarms emitted by my (smarter than me) phone
that tell me where to be, when and whom to see and why. It’s a robotic like response to a
technological, digital, mechanical world.
But blogging is a longer form of communication. It is (hopefully) connecting. I look forward to every deadline as
another opportunity to let my, newly highlighted hair down, and tell as many folks as possible (all
3 of you! ) how I roll. I feel
great about my blog and the musings, revelations and rants of sister bloggers. So when a friend sent me an announcement
about her first blog, I shared her excitement. I read it and
wanted to wish her blogging happiness with a self-promoting comment. The moment after submitting my comment,
which included She So Funny. Blogspot.com, my good feelings and even my sense
of humanity was challenged! I was
told to enter a series of letters that appeared to be mid-trip on mushrooms.
I have to prove I am not a robot?
After collecting my dignity like a worn tattered shawl, I
did as instructed. I mechanically
entered the data requested. I held my breath while wondering, am I
still human or have I morphed into
an automaton in denial of mother cyborg?
The screen changed.
Somewhere, somehow my response was deemed human! I am not a robot, at least not
yet. But when I start getting
parts replaced, a hip here, a knee there, trans-vaginal mesh wherever… I may
have only the photo above to remind me of other days; after all resistance is
futile.
