Talking Machines and Mad Scientists

I have a problem. Actually, I have lots of problems but one particular one is bothering me at the moment: machines that talk to me. Now, I'm not going to include Stephen W Hawking in this category of things that bother me. He's not a machine, for a start, and he needs his talking computer (and it would be hilarious if somebody reprogrammed it to talk like Yoda - something I once heard in a Radio comedy program) and the world would be a much poorer place without him. No, what really scares me is things like lifts and pay on foot machines that talk to me.

I think this thing goes back a fair few years for me. I've had a horror of human bits being transplanted into machines for some time now. There is a science fiction novel I read years ago called Karma, where a blind man is given the opportunity to get his sight back and then has his brain transplanted into a guided missile. He can see then, but it is not quite what he was expecting. I found that particularly disturbing. Then there is the Doctor Who episode, I think it is Revelation of the Daleks where the daleks transplant a man's head into a new super-dalek. That made me jump too. I even find Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends mildly distasteful.

But talking machines are a double-edged sword. Yes, there is the remote possibility that some mad scientist has transplanted the brain and vocal chords of some poor sap into the pay on foot machines at our local car park on the promise of restoring his/her sight but these machines also make me feel decidedly schizophrenic. My brother-in-law is schizophrenic and he hears voices. Four to be precise and they are very balanced. Two say good things about him and two say bad things. The nasty ones talk more, which is a shame because he's a great bloke and I think the world of him. He knows that they don't exist but they really distract him from daily life and make conversations with him interesting, if not positively challenging.

These machines sometimes feel like voices in my head and I often want to answer back. When the car park machine says "Please insert money", I get the urge to say "Hold your horses, I haven't even got my wallet out of my bag yet! You should try getting my wallet out of my bag, it's not easy you know." When the lift says, "Doors closing," I want to shout "I know! Leave me alone!" and then cower in a corner, trying to block out this mad world. It might perhaps be a little easier for me if the lifts imitated the ones in Are you being served? and said "Going up!" in a friendly voice but then again, maybe not. I really don't know how the machines in the car park could improve their service. Probably, the only way would be to shut up.