Hey Google! What are my wakewords?

When my phone and my Google Home device started speaking to each other, I got an inkling of the future. We are in the process of becoming bit players in our own lives. 

I was listening to a podcast on my phone, which had featured a phrase similar to the magic words, “Hey Google”. Ever helpful, my Home device sprang into action, eager to answer the enquiry it imagined was coming from my phone. 

There was no such enquiry. My podcast was probably listing a song title like “Hey girl”, or something similar. The podcast is “The History of rock n roll in 500 Songs”. I have a serious music habit.

Those terms like “Hey Google” are called wakewords, as they rouse your digital assistant into action. 

ALSO READ: The joys of learning together, instead of telling each other things

As I sat back like the third wheel on an awkward date while my devices chatted to each other, I was struck by the similarities with some of the political discussions I find myself witnessing. 

Much like “Hey Google” triggers my little speaker into action, our modern social discourse is littered with trigger words that stir us from our slumbers, to launch the knee-jerk responses we have been programmed with. 

What are my personal wakewords, I wondered?

What gets me motivated enough to wade into a discussion, regurgitating a set of opinions I have acquired from my carefully curated echo chamber of self-reinforcing statements?

Well, I am a big fan of repeating my opinions on vaccinating (do it), the holocaust (my people are genocidaires), white privilege (my people been having it), cross-cultural engagement (not as simple as it seems), and the music of Belize (funk meets reggae).

However, I am also conscious that most, if not all of those stances are received opinions.

I’m a clever guy, but my views on the world are gleaned by reading the content fed to me, and living the same kind of life millions of other people have lived before me. 

So I am not unique. In a sense, I am a recording, a computerised voice, ready to repeat the political programming that has been embedded within me.

Perhaps, being conscious of this, I have more chance of redemption, but I doubt it. 

When last did I ever change my mind on anything? Okay I changed my mind on Novak Djokovic, but before that, it was years. 

ALSO READ: Cancelling Djokovic is easy, but how far do you take it from there?

My views have kind of ossified, hardened into solidity, like those of many others. 

Vaccines. The EFF. The government. Gender relations. Race. Veganism… All of these polarising topics have teams arrayed on either side, firm in their convictions. Unshakeable in their belief. Unwavering in their certainty. 

And that certainty is made constantly firmer by the confirming bias we are willingly and unwillingly exposed to.

The brave new world promised by the era of “user-generated content” has become a digital economy of shares and retweets, where we recycle opinions endorsed by people we already agree with, to a community of followers who already agree with us. 

The result is a cosy sense of being right about everything. Meanwhile, across the aisle, the “opposing” factions do the same, confirming and reinforcing each other’s beliefs.

On the rare occasion when we are exposed to each other’s opinions, we quickly unfollow, block or report each other, to preserve our precious mental health. 

Every time someone in our community utters one of our wakewords, we roar into life, ready to regurgitate the same opinions we always do, with perhaps a fresh selection of words that say the same thing. 

I used to complain about it ceaselessly. But now I love it to bits!

I rest, warm and comfy, safe in the reassuring bosom of my confirmation bias. Main character in my autobiography. The star of my own show. 

What the next season of this show will bring, I do not know. Hopefully the scriptwriters don’t change things up too much.

I mean, if they change the wakewords, I really won’t know what to say!

NOW READ: Lindiwe Sisulu and co playing broken telephone in a war of words that aren’t their own