Of Aunts and Apps

Every so often, my elder brother, an ardent fan of old Hindi movie songs, will get a tune in his head. He wants to know which movie was it from, who the singer and composer was, who were the featured actors. So he contacts the expert. Our aunt, father's youngest sister, a great singer and movie buff, will give him the answers within a minute, give or take a few seconds. Sometimes she will call me to relate this incident. Sometimes, the quiz continues to other songs, other movies, a few bars sung across a STD call and another memory is created, a connection reaffirmed.

Now there is an app that you can download on your phone, Shazam (?) It can listen to a piece of music and within a few seconds, it can tell you the name of the song and the singer. It takes very little effort, no small talk and works pretty well most of the time. It impresses me for a while but leaves to impression. I don't feel any more connected to my gadget than the minute before it showed me its "smartphone" features. I marvel at the technology but make to memories. I don't have an excuse to call my aunt. Perhaps initiate a conversation where I learn more about her than her prodigious musical memory, a few bits of the Bhagavad Geeta perhaps, that she is mastering or a fable that has a moral underpinning that I need to hear that day.

I know my friends look up recipes on the internet. But I learnt to make avakai last summer because another aunt was visiting and she transferred to me not just the proportions and process of making the pickle but also her love for preparing foods that her family loves. If you need directions, use Mapquest, not the friendly Uncle next door who would love to have an excuse to chat and provide valuable advice as to which route to take on a weekday at rush hour versus the scenic route on a leisurely Sunday drive. We call Just Dial for a phone number instead of asking a friend who has used a service where she gives you not just the number but also her opinion about how three competing companies compare on service.

I support technology and appreciate the ease with which we have integrated it into our lives, saving large chunks of time that previously were spent in lines for paying utility bills and booking tickets. But what are we doing with this extra time? Spending it on looking for more gadgets and widgets, for apps and downloads, withdrawing into a virtual world where human interaction becomes optional? To live a full life, it is important to feel, to interact, to engage. Not just with the buzzing screen of the computer but with a living person, however slow, fallible and unpredictable they may be. Humans need human interaction. It is through these relationships that we learn and grow, we love and share, we bicker and bond. When the interface does not respond in the same human dimension, however quick it may be, it is an incomplete feeling. For the geeks who get all their satisfaction from developing these new apps and gadgets, I have a simple questions. When you have that "Eureka" moment of discovery, who do rush to share it with? Android or human?