The Age of Buttons.

I’m becoming increasingly concerned at the extent to which technology is taking over the affairs of modern life – often with maddening inadequacy and frequent dysfunction – and in so doing, usurping the human touch which is the lifeblood of the human experience. I’ve had several experiences of this in the past week alone, and it seems to be getting worse.

Take Outlook email, for example. When you get an email now, it comes with a selection of three buttons which you can use to send a stock reply. Mel sent me one recently which said ‘I’ve paid that £100 back into your account.’ My first inclination was to reply ‘OK, thanks,’ and do you know what? There was a button which said OK, thanks. Did I use it? Most certainly I didn’t. I clicked the reply arrow and typed ‘OK, thanks.’ If I have something to say to somebody, I’ll say it myself. I find it nothing less than offensive to allow some damn machine to say it for me.

But then I wondered how their algorithm comes up with the stock replies. Let’s suppose I get an email from some young woman acquaintance which says:

Oh Jeffrey; dearest, dearest Jeffrey. Oh my oh my. Oh my God. Oh my giddy aunt.

 I had to write to thank you for the magical time we spent together last night. You are a prince among men, my dear. Did I say prince? Nay, a king… an emperor even. A wingèd angel clothed in gold samite. To call you an avatar would do you scant justice.

Never in my life has my womanhood been kindled to such blazing passion. Never has the most stringently guarded part of my inner self been rent asunder by a presence of such velvet-clad power. Never has my very soul been so massaged and taken to heavenly realms by the lord of all there is to survey there.

Please be mine forever, my darling J. If you deny me this, I fear I cannot live. Reply to me upon the instant while my poor heart still beats fretfully in expectation.

Your Abigail, alive or not as you command.

Would I still get a button which says ‘OK, thanks’?