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Robots – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Robots. So in the conversation, AJ and I were talking about…some of the things we were talking about, were cars, these taxi services starting to drive, the cars in the services starting to drive themselves, drive the passengers around without an actual person driving them. And we were talking about airplanes flying themselves, with people actually flying on the airplanes, passengers. Those were just a couple of things.

So one thing I thought I would talk about, another way that technology has come into people’s lives is these virtual personal assistants. So, for example, the iPhone, y’know, the company Apple that creates the iPhones, they have created Siri in the phones which is a virtual personal assistant.

And one that I just found out about yesterday actually through joe and someone he works with is another virtual personal assistant called Alexa. And Alexa was created by a company called Amazon which is an internet-based company that sells many things. It start out, I think, maybe selling books but now it sells everything you can think of.

So with Siri and the iPhone, you know, you have your phone set up so that Siri can work as your virtual personal assistant and then you just talk into your phone, giving Siri commands, telling Siri what to do. And Siri can do things such as control your music, create to-do lists, among other things.

Alexa, so with Alexa, since this is through an internet-based company, if you’re using the website…so Alexa, first, let me explain, Alexa does many things, too, similar to Siri like creating to-do lists, controlling music, but Alexa will also order products on Amazon. So if you’re using your, the website, you would need to have a, I think it’s a special speaker that you would plug into your computer that that’s what you would speak into.

Again, it’s like Siri. Alexa does what it’s told by voice command, by you talking into the speaker telling Alexa what to do. “Alexa, order me these two books on Amazon.” But also, I guess, apparently you can get an app on your phone to tell Alexa what to do as well.

So it got me thinking how the more technology comes into our lives, specifically like, let’s use the example of shopping on the internet. You know, there’s positive and there’s negative things to that. A positive is that it makes shopping very convenient. You can just sit in your living room and shop for whatever you want on the internet, assuming you, you know, okay let’s use the example of Amazon.

Like I said, Amazon sells many things, although it doesn’t…it doesn’t send to, there’s certain countries it will only ship things to that you purchase through them. So maybe this isn’t something you can actually

do in your country. In the United States, more and more people are buying things on the internet. So, like I said, a positive is that it’s very convenient. You don’t have to get dressed, drive, y’know, go out in your car, drive to the store to buy what you need.

You can even, here in San Francisco, I know you can order your groceries online now. And I believe you order what you want, someone will go and do the grocery shopping for you. An actual person does this, and then I believe they deliver the groceries to you. So you don’t have to go grocery shopping. So a positive is it makes things very convenient. It saves you time that you might not have. And, well, that’s probably the big one is that it’s very convenient and saves you time.

Now a negative is that there is less interaction with people then. You know, if you’re doing, let’s say you’re ordering your groceries, y’know, your food, you’re ordering your clothes, you’re ordering everything you need online and you’re not really going out to stores very often, there becomes less interaction between people.

Also another negative thing, I have found, is sometimes I’ll order clothes on the internet and because I haven’t been able to try them on in an actual store, they might not fit, even though I’m ordering the size I think I should get that would fit me, it doesn’t fit. So I have to send it back and order another size. That’s not so convenient.

I meant to mention another, one other positive though actually for shopping on the internet is that it could be cheaper. You know, if a place doesn’t actually have a store, like let’s say Amazon, this internet-based company, they don’t actually have a store. Their store is through the internet so their prices could be cheaper than, for the same products that you might go to a store and find because they’re not paying rent for the building, electricity, water, y’know, the utilities. They don’t have to worry about what we call overhead. They don’t have to worry about those bills. So it could be cheaper. Maybe not, but maybe.

Okay, so that’s two positives. What you’re buying could be cheaper. It’s also more convenient in that you don’t have to leave to go to the store. But then two negatives is that you don’t have that face-to-face interaction with people, that’s missing. And it could be inconvenient if like you’re ordering, for instance, you’re ordering clothes and they’re not your size after all.

So that also makes me think of not just shopping but our business, having English lessons through the internet. Y’know, we don’t actually, me, Joe, AJ, we don’t have an actual school. So I know for me, it’s…it’s been difficult at times not having that interaction with my students like I’ve had in the past when I’ve taught in actual classrooms. I’ve missed that interaction with my students.

And it could be the same for you. You would like to actually have me or Joe and/or AJ teaching you in an actual classroom so you would have that interaction with us instead of it being through a video like this, or just the audio that you’re listening to. But, so that’s a negative, but then the positive is it is more convenient that you can listen to these lessons at your leisure.

So, in other words, at a time when you’re able to and you don’t have to go to, you don’t have to commit to going to a class every week or every other week, however often you would go. You can just download the lessons and listen to them when you want.

Okay, so from the conversation and from this commentary, I’m curious, what are your thoughts about all of these advancements with technology? Do you think they’re good? Do you think they’re bad? Maybe they’re both. There’s good and bad as I’ve talked about with shopping and taking classes. We’d love to hear from you on the social site, love to hear your opinion.

Alright, that’s all for this commentary for Robots. Have a good month. I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.