Need to Develop

I have been isolated for quite some time now and a friend has been pushing me to go out and do something. Over email I suggested that we have - what used to be - our customary morning coffee at Timmies.

Now, Gmail has been a wonderful web-based email client. It is snappy enough and even advanced things, like sorting incoming mail, has not been any hassle. Actually, the best asset is the superb spam filter. I rarely think about it, though, because there is no spam in my inbox, ever.

In the message to my friend I asked "maybe we can go for coffees tomorrow morning?" Gmail evidently processed the whole message, including that quote, and found an interesting match: "coffees tomorrow morning?" Ah ha, thought Gmail, my buddy Google Calendar would like that. Let's prompt the user to see if they want to add a "coffees morning?" event to their calendar on tomorrow's date!

Is this brilliant software design or somewhat invasive? Sure, it wasn't sentient enough to understand that a more appropriate title would have been "morning coffees", or that a coffee morning should not default to an all-day event. But having software infer what I am trying to do with such coherence came so unexpectedly that it just felt bizarre.

When the computer makes assumptions about things we do not care or think about, nothing seems out of the ordinary. When the computer figures out what we want to do next, not only is it convenient but you also may be fooled into thinking you are dealing with something intelligent.