When I was in the first grade, one of my friends dressed exactly like Troy Dungan, the weatherman on one of local news stations, as often as he could. That meant that he wore a bow tie and round eyeglasses (even though he could see perfectly fine). He would draw hypothetical weather maps over and over, just to reiterate the different symbols for the different sort of events (rain, hail, lightning, snow and the like) – symbols that no longer show up on modern television because of the different graphical elements available but still appear on the maps that meteorologists share and see. He would get home from school and, after he finished his homework, would draw weather maps and read about the weather until it was time for bed. I didn’t know that he was autistic until we were adults; he did not move out of his mother’s house until he graduated college and went away for his MBA. However, many of his behavioral traits showed that he had autism but was on the higher end of the functional spectrum. Socially, in school he was one of the most awkward people I knew, having a difficult time forming conversations with people.
As Judith Newman points out in her essay “To Siri, With Love: How One Boy with Autism Became BFF with Apple’s Siri,” the conversations that her son Gus has with Siri serve to calm and focus him – and even teach him social cues – far more effectively than conversations with his teachers (and peers) do in many cases. As Newman points out, “what gives [Gus] happiness is not necessarily the same as what gives [her] happiness” (Newman, web). The degree to which the programmers at Apple have “taught” Siri to engage people ranges from the amusing to the surprising, and there is no sign that the artificial intelligence establishment is showing any signs of slowing down. There could easily come a time when we no longer need one another; instead, we may only need Siri.
If you think about it, many of the frustrations that parents feel with their children who have autism are the same issues that people feel when they have to put up with others in any sort of relationship. Newman writes about observing her autistic son spending an hour talking to Siri “parsing the difference between isolate and scattered thunderstorms – an hour in which, thank God, [she] didn’t have to discuss them” (Newman, web). It is not too long before Gus says, “’You’re a really nice computer’” (Newman, web). Siri gives Gus everything that he wants: patient answers to his questions without any sort of self-interest. Parents (and friends) of autistic children often “feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and sometimes defeated” (Brennan, web) about the stresses that accompany socializing with such a difficult conversationalist. However, if you think about it, over time we develop the same sort of frustrations with those with whom we spend the most time. There are some therapist who argue that “annoying behavior is a sign of being comfortable with each other” (Asatryan, web) because it means that partners feel like they can be their true selves around one another. However, with a partner like Siri, that would annoyance would never come because Siri is not a person with an ego. Instead, it is a programmed entity designed to bring comfort and harmony to the user’s existence. Does it not make sense that technology would move us more toward relationships with these entities rather than with other people in order to reduce stress?
Right now, there are considerable limits to personal interaction with Siri. The interface through which people currently access Siri is completely aural, “with only the lines of dialogue and a small microphone button” (McArthur, p. 122). It is clear, of course, that there is not a human entity on the other end of the conversation; Siri is just the output from an extremely sophisticated program. However, the quality of the conversations that one can have with Siri make that interaction a bit uncanny because of “its liminal place at the threshold of the human” (McArthur, p. 122). It is not that far beyond the realm of possibility to imagine a robot capable of responding to the desires, both stated and suggested by movements, and taking on the full physical form of a person without having the full mental or affective capacities. This could range from child-sized robots (imagine Gus sitting and having conversations with a robot of this type, and even having that robot accompany him to the park and play with him) to adult-sized robots designed to fill the vast majority of the spectrum of human interactions – but also coming with an “off” switch, much like Siri has now. At what point would that become the more frequently desired paradigm for interpersonal relationships?
This brings us back to a consideration of what exactly defines autism. Unlike pneumonia or the Ebola virus, autism is a condition that takes a variety of manifestations, which is why it is referred to as a spectrum disorder. In general, autism refers to a “serious neurodevelopmental disorder that impairs a child’s ability to communicate and interact with others. It also includes restricted repetitive behaviors, interests and activities. These issues cause significant impairment in social, occupational and other areas of functioning” (Mayo Clinic Staff, web). This indicates that people who are autistic have a difficult time communicating with the rest of the population, and that there is a wide variety in the degree to which this difficulty appears. One could well wonder if the difficulties of the type that Newman speaks in her discussion of her interactions with Gus are on her end of the relationship as well. After all, the irritation we feel when other people talk to us longer than we want them to (or about different topics than we would like them to) is not a part of the technical definition of autism, but that barrier of communication becomes an issue fairly quickly.
If Siri brings comfort to Gus and those like him, she also brings comfort to the rest of us, because she brings us the information that we want and the feedback that we are after without any of the other factors that go into human interaction. We don’t have to ask how she is doing; we don’t have to listen to her questions. Instead, we can just take what we want from the situation. We can plop our more difficult friends and family members down next to her without having to deal with them ourselves. So Siri is not only here to stay, she may be the future of how we relate to one another.
Works Cited
Asatryan, Kira. “Annoyance is a Sign of a Good Relationship.” Time 18 February
2016. Web. 1 April 2016.
Brennan, Dan. “Parenting a Child with Autism. September 2015. Web. 1 April
2016.
Mayo Clinic Staff. “Autism Spectrum Disorder.” 3 June 2014. Web. 1 April 2016.
McArthur, Emily. “The iPhone Ehrfahrung.” In Design, Mediation and the
Posthuman, Dennis M. Weiss, Amy D. Propen and Coleby Emmerson Reid, eds. New York: Lexington Books, 2014.
Newman, Judith. “To Siri, with Love: How One Boy with Autism Became BFF with
Apple’s Siri.” New York Times 19 October 2014. Web. 1 April 2016.
