What the Duck?

The grass is always greener on the other side, and it’s about time somebody blamed Monsanto and genetic modification for it.

Or the Japanese.

Wherever highly advanced technology is used in pursuit of the absurd, expect the Japanese to be there. Back when I was a kid, I’d seen a picture of square watermelons in the newspapers, and it turned out it was a Japanese thing. Since that day, I’d always been suspicious of the Japanese when it came to technology. If a country with the latest, greatest, state-of-the-art, cutting edge technology at its disposal could use it to come up with square watermelons, you wouldn’t put anything past them. Over the years, the Japanese have gone on to repeatedly demonstrate beyond a shadow of doubt that my fears were well founded. A vending machine that dispenses underwear? Check. A toilet with controls more complicated than an airline cockpit? Check. A robotic pet with all the trouble of a real pet but without the fun? Check. A device worn around your face that makes you look like a cartoon lion, to prevent your hair from falling into your bowl of soupy ramen? Check. While corporations use technology in pursuit of profit and Governments use it to make bombs, the Japanese use technology to create ridiculous vending machines.

While it can deliver dubious benefits when in the wrong hands, there is a lot of good that technology has done – it’s cured a lot of diseases, given us access to so much information and allowed us to watch Game of Thrones on the same day as it’s released in the US. Not being Amish, I’m by and large pro technology – I use smart phones, order groceries online and, thanks to Google Maps, am finally not in the embarrassing position of refusing to ask for directions and getting lost. I think Google Maps has done a great favour to all men – we finally don’t need to ask for directions, something that we hated doing in the first place.

Another example of good technology is predictive texting, although that’s probably the wrong term for it. Whatever it’s called officially, I’m impressed that my phone is able to predict the word I’m trying to form in the middle of typing, and suggesting options that would save me time. Of course, sometimes it’ll lead to massive gaffes, with auto correct deciding, in its infinite wisdom, that large bosoms are a more plausible reason for disconnecting a client’s call than being busy, and therefore changing “I’m busy” to “I’m busty”. Still, I can live with the occasional faux pas in exchange for the overall benefit this technology provides. What has utterly baffled me, though, is that the same predictive technology can also detect when you’re trying to use swear words, and then simply refuse to type them out. Ever. It’s as if there is some technological moral police coded into that software that’s decided that swearing is bad for you. I could understand if they had a child mode that enabled the phone to do this – but why have it on all phones? We’re swearing all the time anyway, so why does the phone have to step in and decide it’s not right? We get enough lessons in morality from religion, the censor board, assorted busybodies and the government. To compound the issue, the phone refuses to save any swear word even after I’ve used it repeatedly. Fuck is always changed to duck, bastard is changed to batter, bitch is changed to botch and asshole is changed to the mystifying ‘Anole’. Why?

But coming back to good technology, while I don’t care much for drones delivering pizzas or any other packages, I am excited about driverless cars. But while driverless cars are perfect for those Western countries where traffic rules are taken seriously and good driving skills are enough to get by on the roads, what happens in a country like India where you’ll often land up in trouble or cause a traffic jam if you’re following traffic rules? More crucially, what happens when a driverless car gets into an accident with a human-driven car on a busy Delhi road? Can the car start abusing in chaste Hindi, to create the right aura of menace and intimidation? Will the driverless car be able to threaten the guy in the other car by claiming to know the police commissioner or a local politician? And what about the human in the other car – how does he go about hurling abuses at a car or beating up a car?

It’s the sort of oversight that could result in driverless cars failing in India. Just like it happened with vending machines – I think the reason they didn’t succeed in India is that they don’t allow you to bargain. In a country that boasts a proud tradition of bargaining, that’s suicide. It deprives one of the sweet satisfaction of a well-earned bargain, that proud glow of vanquishing the shopkeeper in his own game and getting a deal that someone of a weaker disposition would not have obtained, which makes the purchase worth savouring. Perhaps with the advent of artificial intelligence, they could come up with a vending machine that could bargain – it would be just the sort of vending machine that would work in India.

Picture this – there’s a vending machine that lists the price of a Coke can as Rs 30. A man enters a ten-rupee note and presses the button to dispense the coke.

Vending Machine: Rupees ten? Are you kidding me? That wont even cover the cost of electricity I’m using up in this transaction.

Man: It’s water and sugar, pretty much. I can get the same thing for 20 elsewhere. 30 is too much. I could give you 15, but not a paisa more than that.

Vending Machine: Oh come on, have a heart. I know I don’t, but that’s because I’m a vending machine. Still, everyone has to make a living…you think I’ll be allowed to operate here if I don’t earn money? It’ll be the junkyard for me – rotting away in obscurity alongside old TVs and refrigerators, valued only as scrap metal. Make it 25 at least.

Man: No way, I know all your tricks; I wont fall for that sob story. 20 is the best I can do – I know you’ll still make a neat little profit out of that. Otherwise I’ll walk away.

Man starts walking away.

Vending machine: Fine – see if you can get the Coke for lesser anywhere else. I promise you my Coke is the cheapest.

(Secretly hoping that man will turn around and come back. But man continues to walk away, secretly hoping that vending machine will call out after him.)

Vending machine: All right, all right, 20 rupees it is! Here, come back and take it.

Man walks away glugging the can of Coke, refreshed more by the sweet satisfaction of a perfectly executed bargain than the Coke itself.