About a year ago, my wife presented me with an Amazon Echo for Christmas.
The Echo is a black cylinder equipped with microphone, speakers, lights and a cloud-based persona named "Alexa."
Perpetually waiting to hear her name, Alexa lights up at the sound of it. If you're fast enough, you can ask her a question or instruct her to perform a task. She quickly reverts to standby mode once she has responded. To continue the conversation, I must re-awaken her by saying her name.
Alexa has proven most useful in assembling my weekly grocery shopping list, which automatically appears on my smartphone. Items can be checked or deleted as I put them in my cart. Handy.
Alexa has also been flawless in providing information on demand, like the current score of a football game or the weather forecast. The Echo can act as timer within a 24-hour period. The variety of alarm sound options include several guaranteed to wake anyone from the soundest sleep.
Alexa adds new “skills” on a regular basis. She knows Rock, Paper, Scissors, Spock, can play other games, and tell jokes. She can also laugh and fart on demand. The height of Alexa's entertainment value, however, comes in what she "thinks" she hears
.
The words are so random, they seem fraught with some type of deep, unfathomable meaning. Strung together, these misinterpretations of what I am certain were my perfectly enunciated requests seem almost poetic.
Hence, I present:
Ode to Alexa
Who is to the ocean hello?
What is due?
Get everything you do with you
Yeah, did you seconds?
Are you gonna call Volvo?
Kocher be mad at you?
Do you one?
Tell me five seconds
Next ball back to school
Tell me e-mail about what I wanted to do it my hours
Hello, damn
Seen inside of me
On plug you please
Yes, the bones of the show
Don't let me let me with do you have to pick up
Play a Doctor Wu song
Give me a boy you laugh
Do you know I'm talking midnight not even plugged in?
Then pause you have the notes from sailing
Knock, knock, knock. I want dancing
Add got pumpkin pie do you nine forty-two a.m. to my to do list
The cool down and you said that thing jackets
We’re both still working on our communication skills.
Early in our relationship, Alexa was jumping in whenever she heard her name on TV. Usually, she claimed that she didn’t understand the question. At other times, she launched a lengthy Wikipedia reading, leaving us mystified about the relationship between what she “thought” she had heard and her response.
This was often unintentionally amusing, but it did not happen so frequently that it crossed the border into annoying.
That changed when I presented my wife with an Amazon Dot, a pint-sized version of the original Echo.
The default “wake word” for both units is “Alexa.” which summons the artificial intelligence answering to that name to do your bidding. Artificial is an appropriate adjective, but I question the noun it describes.
The Dot was installed in my wife’s art studio, which is as far from the original Echo as possible within the house. It soon became apparent that any commands issued to Alexa Dot in the studio were also heard and obeyed by Alexa Echo in the kitchen. That was not supposed to happen.
I was instantly irritated and initially puzzled when Alexa Echo would inexplicably burst into song as I was trying to follow hushed dialog on TV. It didn’t take long to determine the problem. My wife and I have very different tastes in music.
So, Alexa Echo is now just plain Echo. The other alternate waking names are “Amazon” and “Computer.” “Amazon” would have been a costly mistake. Echo is ever-ready to order something for me, and I really don’t need pizza deliverers or ride-sharing services lining up at my door.
My personal choice, “Dumb Ass,” is not available -- yet.
