![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Tonight I picked up the ringing phone and said "Hello?" After a moment a recorded or mechanical voice answered "We are sorry to disturb you. This message was intended to be received by an answering machine." End of conversation.
Some questions came to my mind:
Are they gaining on us? Talking to each other behind our backs, and cutting us out of the loop? I mean of course they are, but are they now so brazen about it that they can dismiss our clumsy interferences in their private dialogues, sure that we'll humbly hang up (without apology, of course, as that would be insultingly inappropriate -- do we think they are human?).
How did the machine calling me know that I am not a machine?
What did it want to say to my answering machine it would not or could not say to me? I'd (theoretically) be able to retrieve any message it left there. Unless....
I'm all atremble.
Some questions came to my mind:
Are they gaining on us? Talking to each other behind our backs, and cutting us out of the loop? I mean of course they are, but are they now so brazen about it that they can dismiss our clumsy interferences in their private dialogues, sure that we'll humbly hang up (without apology, of course, as that would be insultingly inappropriate -- do we think they are human?).
How did the machine calling me know that I am not a machine?
What did it want to say to my answering machine it would not or could not say to me? I'd (theoretically) be able to retrieve any message it left there. Unless....
I'm all atremble.
:::sputters:::
Seriously, I can't stop laughing although in a full blown existential crisis kind of manner.
PS. This temps me to answer any and all calls: "Is this the
personmachine to whom I'm speaking?"Edited at 2008-09-22 11:21 pm (UTC)
But it is an interesting question indeed, why anyone would communicate only with answering machines.
If it were a genuine plot then they wouldn't be so honest or possibly leave a message to be passed on to your answer machine when you're out.
Most of the junk calls I get are American robot callers telling me I've won something (caller preference service keeps out all salesmen except the marketing survey mob). Another example of something that should not be allowed to cross the US border along with the food and finance.
We've been getting a lot of calls at home lately. Sometimes I can forestall a call if I just stay silent for a few seconds after picking up the receiver. If there's a real person there, they'll usually say hello.
This machine didn't specify what it was apologizing for. It must have been an earlier model of the one that called your answering machine and got you instead.
Maybe laws against using automated dialing for telemarketing are involved? But I don't see how, exactly.
It reminds me a bit of Ray Bradbury's story about the alien invaders that enlist the earth's children to help them because adults won't believe them. This one mother's suspicions keep growing because her kids behave strangely all day long, staying out of the house and borrowing kitchen knives and stuff. At the end she is hiding in the attic listening to the steps mounting the stairs and she knows that they are coming to get her.
When I was a kid my parents gave me a chess machine. It was a large board without a display but it had a speaker and it talked to you. Once I dropped it down a long flight of stairs, and though it kept working it started behaving funny at times. It would call strange moves, stupid or illegal, and sometimes it would call a piece firefly in its monotonal robotic voice.
"E2 to F4 firefly takes rook" That used to scare the shit out of me and I've ever since been kind of superstitious about machines.
Edited at 2008-09-23 03:08 pm (UTC)
machine calls
ps
Re: machine calls
Re: machine calls
They're gaining
It made me wonder, who is at the end of the chain here? Maybe there's one computer out there trolling message boards for lonely losers who will do things for them....
If computers were really going to evolve to control humans, that would be a great way to start. From a disinterested electronic viewpoint, we are as easily controlled by love as by fear.
I'll be thinking of these calls a little differently from now on, I can assure you.
Here, what we have is phone ringing, picking it up and hearing: "Don't cut back, your correspondent will shortly come back to you."
I immediately cut the communication. It's a code. My friends react in the same way.
&don'tblockcallsorhaveunpublished#sorusethegovservice
Robodialers detect a human (as opposed to a machine) mostly by a very simple trick: if you answer "Hello?" (one word, followed by a pause), you're probably a human. If you answer "You have reached the phone of Ferdinand X. Snerfwaffler..." (more than one word, no pauses), you're probably a machine. You can fool the robodialers by picking up and saying nothing, or by answering the phone "Hello, this is Womzilla, how can I help you?" with no pause.
But most robodialers are programmed to hang up on answering machines--they want to give their pitch to a human, or else transfer the call to a human in a call center. "Scheming" seems the most likely explanation for why a robodialer would want to speak to a robolistener. Or perhaps "lonliness".