I do not have a favorite app. I use my phone for something completely revolutionary. I make a call. I receive a call. I prefer simpler things in life.
For much of my childhood, there was no television. We only had radio, motion pictures, periodicals, and books. Most of your information about the world you got from books. Now there’s the internet, social media, video games. Technology is taking over the world.
There’s a book sitting on my desk right now by Yuval Noah Harari called 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Some of his main points are about how technology and robots and AI are changing our society to the point where we need to start considering what kind of an existence we’re going to have.
It’s already happening. When I go on my computer to research something, those little sidebars come up. I may be researching history but something comes up on television sets or telephone systems or things that I bought to do repairs around the house. The computer knows where I’ve been.
I also see it with my drug prescriptions. They know when I’m running out and they renew automatically. I don’t know how the hell I got ahead of them, but I’ve got too many pills. I take them once a day. They’re supposed to last ninety days. Maybe they renew every seventy-five days. You get fifteen pills ahead each month over a period of years, that adds up.
I dazzled my wife the other day. She was out of town, and someone had sent a beautiful flower arrangement to her. I said, “Oh God, these flowers will be dead and gone by the time she gets back.” So I took a picture and figured out how to send the picture to her. She sent me back a lovely message. She said, “Look at you, you’re texting! And sending a picture!” And she put a heart and one of them little smiley faces at the end. I don’t know how to do that yet.