5/4/2021 A Trophy
So the other day, I was reading up on updates to Android 11 from Android 10, and I came across a few that caught my attention as they are just over-the-top, absolutely absurd to me. First up was the new App Suggestions feature. Apparently it's only available on Google's Pixel Phones, so the Samsungers will just have to keep using their brains. What's going on is Google's AI is observing your behavior on your phone (and reporting back to headquarters), and it will automatically add and remove apps from the dock on your home screen depending on the time of day they've observed you using them. So for example, if you always open your FitBit app first thing in the morning to check out your sleep patterns from the night before, your phone will automatically move the app to the dock every morning so that you can access it from there. Man, good thing we don't have to do that whole swipe up and tap thing. That was getting pretty out of hand. I sat there, jaw dropped and brow furrowed when I read this. Just thinking about it, I'm making the same face again. The second feature that had me shaking my head was the Smart Reply feature. Now, you don't even have to think of words to say to other people, Google's AI will do it for you!! All that using the brain stuff was just too hard before. Anyway, the AI will read your text messages (and report back to headquarters) and present a list of suggested replies on your screen. So now, your brain no longer needs to (read: gets to) swirl up the chemicals necessary for communication.
I'm having a hard time coming up with the words to describe my reaction to this. So obviously, speechless is one of them. Sad is among them. Depressed, even. Confounded maybe but I can't say I'm actually surprised. Almost embarrassed and ashamed to be counted one among the race of humans of this century. Not because of the features themselves, but the unfathomable reason that features like this seem necessary to people. I would guess that the average smartphone user reading this (I've looked at my analytics, I know no one's reading this, but still I want to say it) would think that these features are "neat" and make "life" just that much more "convenient." Since when is a calculator worn on the wrist necessary to determine how you slept last night? When you wake up, you either feel rested or your don't. If you do, you get up and go about your day. If you don't, you can either choose to stay in bed longer or get up and maybe take it easy that day. Might doze off sometime in the afternoon for a spell then feel rested after that. That's just it though. You don't give yourself that choice. That very fact makes it all the more difficult to get adequate sleep, so the issue compounds. I think it's been pretty well proven that doing the same things at the same time every day...day in and day out for your entire life is actually really bad for your brain. Sure, an efficiency develops, but I think it needs to be moderated with periods of challenge, or else there will be no growth and your mental and physical well-beings will atrophy. In physical activity, there is a term called muscle confusion, or if you're a "muscle confusion critic," then maybe progressive overload might be the term you would prefer. The idea with muscle confusion is that if you do the same workout routine week after week, your body (muscles, nerves, connective tissue) will stop progressing on its journey to strength because the activity becomes predictable. This is a part of what's called muscle memory. The activity becomes easy because your brain has sent the same signals to the muscles so many times, and as a result the neuro-pathways are thick and strong, so there is virtually no effort involved in sending the electrical impulse from brain to muscle. With muscle confusion (as opposed to muscle memory), what you do is you change up your workout every few weeks. Do things in a different order, work different muscle groups with one another, things like that. This way, your body has a harder time predicting what will come next, so it takes more energy to achieve that goal. The path that the neuron takes through the brain is ever so slightly different before it gets to the nerve to send the impulse to the muscle. Progressive overload is a simple premise. Over the course of both the individual workout and also the whole workout program in general, you gradually increase the amount of weight you're lifting. This way, your muscles are constantly working a little harder than they did last time. Maybe you add reps or take a shorter break between sets. These are also concepts within the progressive overload principle. In both principles, muscle confusion and progressive overload, there are consistent but small changes from one workout to the next. It is these small changes that contribute to growth. This variation, to me, seems to reflect the rest of nature more closely than the idea of waking up at the same exact minute every morning because an electronic device has been programmed to make a sound loud enough for long enough to disturb your sleep. Trees, under the force of wind, develop cells on the side of their trunks opposite from which the wind is blowing in an effort to strengthen that side and build it up so that the tree doesn't lean and eventually fall under its own weight. It's called tropism. That's like the progressive overload. The changing of the seasons is like the muscle confusion--changing light and temperatures send the plant through the cycles necessary for it to maintain life. Comments are closed.
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