My phone knows what I want before I do. That should be worrying – but it’s oddly comforting | Emma Beddington
On the downside, all my personal data is being harvested by faceless corporations. On the up, I’ve got a little parent in my pocket, anticipating my every need
I awoke recently to one of those galleries of photographic memories curated for me by my phone. This one featured my best friend, M: admiring a dosa, stroking her cat, holding a pair of Parisian melons and lying in my garden. It made me smile and when I told her, she said her phone had had the same idea. “It keeps trying to get me to put you as wallpaper,” she messaged, showing me its suggestions. Like pushy parents, it was as if our phones had got together and decided it was time we had a playdate. The worst of it is they are right: I really miss her.
It reminded me of all the other ways my phone parents me. When I get out of choir practice, it volunteers, unprompted, that it will take 12 minutes to get home by my usual route. It helpfully offers to count down a minute when I am at the gym and want to time my rests between weights sets. When I get into the car on Saturday afternoons, it always shows me the way to the supermarket. At bedtime, it offers a shortcut to TikTok because it knows watching cats confused by Ramadan and RuPaul explaining how to parallel park soothes me.
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