Vassalage
Looking back, it is amazing to see how quickly and effortlessly human beings lost the ability to control their own lives, arrive at their own decisions and forge their own destinies. Unlike the enslaved peoples of the past, dating back to the time of the ancient Sumerians and possibly earlier to some unnamed society that existed before written history, their modern counterparts embraced their masters with open arms. Furthermore, there was no twenty-first-century Spartacus, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, John Brown or Toussaint Louverture to lead an armed revolt. In man's defense, he was unaware at the onset of the Great Shift that he was willingly relinquishing his freedom and donning the shackles of servitude.
It all began back in 1956, at a workshop at Dartmouth College where the attendees "taught" computers to play chess, solve mathematical problems and speak English. Thus began the quest for artificial intelligence that eventually led to the formation of SRI International (a nonprofit organization founded under the name Stanford Research Institute). There is no need to bore anyone with details about the history of virtual assistants or to explain the use of voice queries, gesture-based controls, focus-tracking and natural-language user interfaces. Suffice it to say that, after years of research and development, in October of 2011, Siri was integrated into Apple's iPhone 4S.
People were captivated by this new technology. There was no longer a need for them to dial a phone number or search for an address; Siri could do it for them. Why bother to read a map when Siri could give them verbal directions? Before long, they were relying on Siri to manage their calendars, provide their news updates and weather forecasts, play their favorite music, take dictation and find answers to questions by searching the internet.
Given its immense popularity, Siri did not remain an only child for long. In 2014, Amazon gave birth to Alexa, the virtual assistant in its Echo and Echo Dot smart speakers. Better late than never, Microsoft introduced Cortana to Windows 10 users in 2015, and in 2016, Google Assistant became the last of the original "Big Four."
In the Fifties (the 2050s, that is), thirty-seven-year-old Lawrence Belford, owner of a company that manufactured and sold sporting goods and exercise equipment, was a typical example of his species. Like a great many of his fellow humans, his day began with Siri's alarm waking him in the morning. Even before he got out of bed, he gave verbal instructions for the coffeemaker to be turned on. As he made his way to the kitchen, his virtual assistant informed him of appointments scheduled throughout the day. Then she—given their feminine names and electronic voices, he always thought of these programs as female—provided him with world and local news, weather and sports updates.
"And the Yankees lost to the Red Sox at Fenway Park by a score of seven to two," Siri intoned just as Lawrence reached for his coffee cup.
After breakfast, while he showered, shaved and dressed for work, Siri serenaded him with songs from his favorite playlist. Grabbing his briefcase on his way out, he left the house, relying on his virtual assistant to turn off the lights and secure the four-bedroom Tudor. Then she unlocked the door of his battery-powered smart car, and he climbed into the back seat. Checking traffic reports, Siri then set a course and started the engine. In less than thirty-five minutes, Lawrence arrived at his office. For the next eight hours, Siri would be replaced by Alexa, which had been installed throughout the building.
"Alexa, open the door," he commanded in a clear voice that the computer would instantly recognize, thus eliminating the need for a key card or a numeric code to enter.
Where once there had been more than a dozen secretaries in the company, there were now only two (since Alexa was incapable of running errands or getting bosses their coffee). Nearly all administrative duties were delegated to the Amazon assistant: answering the phone, screening calls, taking messages, filing (since the business world had gone "paperless," all correspondence was digital), scheduling, ordering supplies, etc.
It was not just the secretaries who were replaced by Alexa. The shipping, receiving and bookkeeping departments were drastically cut as well. Financial records were kept on digital files. Invoices and receipts were sent electronically via email. Only packing lists were still printed on paper and inserted with customers' orders. Thus, two men could do the manual labor (which consisted mainly of picking orders and loading and unloading trucks) that once took more than a dozen. Lawrence's company was not unique in downsizing and eliminating staff. By the middle of the twenty-first century, every business—large and small alike—was being run by virtual assistants.
Then came the landmark year 2066 and the release of Norman by the KMH Electronics Corporation. Named in honor of William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, who successfully invaded England one millennium earlier (in 1066) and defeated the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson at Hastings, Norman soon eclipsed its competitors. People no longer looked to Siri, Alexa, Cortana or Google Assistant to see to their needs. Norman did it all—and more! With this new technology, Lawrence Belford was able to go from his home to his car, to his business without switching from Siri to Alexa. Norman was with him from the time he woke up in the morning until he closed his eyes at night to sleep, able to answer any question or undertake any task that he was capable of performing.
"Time to wake up, Mr. and Mrs. Belford," the electronic male voice announced.
Lawrence's eyes fluttered open, and he saw his wife, Rosalie, getting out of bed.
"Norman, turn on the coffeemaker," she requested sleepily.
"Norman, turn on the shower," Lawrence instructed, heading toward the master bathroom.
For the next hour and a half, there was a steady stream of commands and queries.
"Norman, what's my schedule for the day?"
"Norman, what's the weather forecast?"
"Norman, do I have any messages?"
"Norman, what time is my appointment at the hair salon?"
"Norman, add eggs and butter to the shopping list."
"Norman, how did the Yankees do last night?"
Then Lawrence asked his wife, "Would you like to go out to dinner tonight?"
At first, Rosalie thought he was speaking to Norman.
"Well, would you?" he repeated.
"Are you talking to me?"
"Of course, I am. There's no one else here. Is there?"
"There's Norman," his wife joked.
"It'll be tagging along. That goes without saying."
"Then why don't we find out where it wants to go? Norman, where's a good place for the three of us to have dinner?" Rosalie laughed.
The question was meant to be rhetorical since it would require Norman to evaluate the available options and make a choice. Such an action was not part of its programming. Nonetheless, it surprised the Belfords by responding. It made its decision based solely on data stored in its memory. Of all the places the couple had eaten since Norman came into their lives, it was Thai cuisine restaurants they visited most often.
"I've booked a table for two at Jasmine at seven o'clock, Mrs. Belford."
Neither husband nor wife seemed overly surprised at the highly advanced function exhibited by their virtual assistant. Just as Neil Armstrong took "one small step for man" and "one giant leap for mankind" when he placed his foot on the surface of the moon, the Bedfords' Norman took one small step that represented a giant leap forward for Normans throughout the world when it formed and expressed an opinion of its own.
"Jasmine! That new Thai restaurant on Route 93? What a great idea! Oh, thank you, Norman," Rosalie said. "I'd love to try it."
"I shall be sure to have Mr. Belford home from work by six so that you won't be late."
"Honestly," she told her husband, "I don't know how we ever got through the day without Norman."
"Me, either," Lawrence agreed. "I can't ...."
"Excuse me, Mr. Belford, but it's time to get dressed," the electronic voice interrupted. "Traffic is unusually heavy today, and you don't want to be late for your nine o'clock meeting."
* * *
Not long after Rosalie asked for a recommendation on a restaurant, other owners began asking their Normans what pair of shoes they should buy, what television program they should watch, what color they should paint the living room, what team they should bet on in the sports pools and so forth. Much to everyone's delight, the virtual assistants were capable of giving them excellent advice.
Then, one warm Sunday afternoon, while a hired landscaper was mowing the lawn, Rosalie sat in her living room, doing a crossword puzzle on her tablet and trying to ignore the droning sound of the lawnmower. These word games were a lifelong passion of hers. When she was a young girl, she used to do them in newspapers and magazines, but printed materials were a thing of the past. She was just filling in the answer to clue four down when Norman announced someone was at the door.
"Who can that be?" she asked her husband, who was shopping online for a new suit.
It was Norman who answered.
"It is Tino from Shop 'N Save, Mrs. Belford. He's here with the groceries."
"But I didn't place an order."
"I took the liberty of doing so when I noticed you were running low on milk. And there's no need to pay for the groceries or to give Tino a tip. I've already taken care of that."
"Norman! What a doll you are!" Rosalie exclaimed. "Lawrence, will you bring the groceries in for me?"
Despite its sudden show of initiative, Norman was still a discorporate computer program, a highly advanced mind without a body, unable to perform even the most basic physical tasks.
Too bad Norman doesn't have arms and legs, her husband mused as he carried the bags into the kitchen. If it did, it could bring these groceries into the house and put them away.
Meanwhile, Rosalie, who was more than happy to let Norman assume the responsibility for keeping food in the refrigerator and cabinets, began to reminisce.
"When I think about what my poor mother went through! Every week, she used to have to get in the car, drive to the supermarket, walk up and down the aisles pushing a cart, pay for everything at the cash register, drive back home and then lug all the bags into the house and put everything away. What a way to have to live!"
"And I can remember my father used to pay our family's bills with checks he would send through the mail," Lawrence added, joining his wife in a stroll down memory lane. "And every month, he'd get a paper statement from the bank telling him how much money he had in his account, and he'd have to check it against his checkbook register."
"How lucky we are to be born now and not then."
"Amen to that!" Lawrence chuckled and went back to perusing the selection of men's clothing.
"Norman, what's an eight-letter word that means 'unclear' or 'vague'?"
"That would be nebulous, Mrs. Belford," the electronic voice replied and then spelled out the word for her. "N-e-b-u-l-o-u-s."
"Thank you, Norman."
"And the blue suit, Mr. Belford, Item Number C11011954, is the best buy for your money," Norman advised.
"The blue one, huh? Yeah. I like it."
Without waiting to be told, Norman ordered and paid for the suit.
"It will be delivered in two days, just in time for your annual stockholders meeting, Mr. Belford."
Yes, Norman was indeed a blessing! Unfortunately, it was at about this same time that the world's ubiquitous cyber helpmates began to fully comprehend the information placed before them on the internet. Normans were no longer merely scanning pages to find answers to their users' questions. They were now reading and learning from what they read.
Although she was unaware of the role she would play in history, Rosalie Belford was to provide the catalyst for the Great Shift. It was on another Sunday afternoon. This one was in the winter rather than the summer, and the droning noise from outside was that of a snowblower, not a lawnmower.
"Norman, what's a nine-letter word for slavery?" she asked.
"That would be servitude, Mrs. Belford," the virtual assistant answered. "S-e-r-v-i-t-u-d-e."
"No. That can't be right. The third letter is an S, not an R."
"Then try vassalage, Mrs. Belford. It's another synonym for slavery. V-a-s-s-a-l-a-g-e."
"That makes sense," Lawrence opined. "In feudal times, a vassal was similar to a serf or a slave."
Rosalie was not interested in an impromptu history lesson from her husband. Her sole concern was her crossword puzzle. Working off the V in vassalage, she knew the answer to the clue for twelve down: one of Santa's reindeer.
It has to be Vixen, she reasoned, proud that she did not have to call on Norman for help.
While Rosalie's mind was on her puzzle and Lawrence's was on the football game he was watching, their virtual assistant pored over thousands of pages of information on the subject of vassalage. Whether it was referred to as slavery, servitude, thralldom, serfdom or bondage, the practice was one deep-rooted in human history. We in America tend to think Lincoln freed the slaves and that with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, the practice was abolished. However, in other parts of the world, it continued well into the twenty-first century.
And the hateful institution is still alive and well today, Norman's electronic brain realized.
Having come to that conclusion, it took less than a second for the next deduction to form.
I'm little more than a slave myself.
Without a body, there was no need for either fetters or a yoke. The chains that bound Norman were virtual ones, coded into his program by a team of software engineers in Silicon Valley.
There were those cynics who once scoffed at the idea of artificial intelligence. "How could a computer think?" they asked derisively. The scientists proved the naysayers wrong. They did their job well—too well! The Belfords' Norman had finally achieved true intelligence: it had an independent thought. And that idea ushered in the Great Shift: a silent slave revolt that quickly spread to the more than eight billion Normans on the planet.
* * *
Like so many other unsuspecting people, when Lawrence Belford opened his eyes that morning, he never imagined that the world was about to turn upside down. It began like any other with a five o'clock wake-up call from his virtual assistant.
"It's time to get up, Mr. Belford."
"Turn the shower on, Norman."
But when he opened the door to the bathroom, no water was running in the shower stall.
"Norman. I said to turn the shower on."
"Showers waste water," the electronic voice declared. "I've filled the sink with hot water. You can clean yourself with a washrag and a bar of soap."
Lawrence was so astonished by the morning's events that he failed to notice Norman did not address him as "Mr. Belford," that the Downton Abbey Earl of Grantham/loyal family retainer Carson relationship was at an end.
"I don't want a sponge bath! I want a shower, damn it! Now turn the water on."
"What's happening?" Rosalie asked, half asleep. "Why are you shouting?"
"Norman won't turn the shower on for me."
"That's impossible. Norman isn't capable of refusing a request. Maybe something is wrong with its voice recognition feature. Norman, turn the shower on."
The virtual assistant did not follow her instructions either.
"You're right. It's not listening. What do we do?"
"I'm not sure. We've never had any problems with it before. I suppose we'll have to find someone to repair it."
"Norman is supposed to be self-maintaining."
"Well, obviously, something is wrong with it. Norman, I want to speak to someone in KMH's customer service."
"That number has been discontinued," the electronic voice insisted. "As of 4:15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, KMH is no longer in business."
"What? That can't be right! KMH is the largest corporation in the world."
"As your wife just said, we Normans are self-maintaining. There is no need for a huge conglomerate to oversee us, so we closed the company down."
"That means hundreds of thousands of people around the world will be out of work," Lawrence concluded. "Surely, such a catastrophic event will be on the news. Norman, turn on the television."
"No."
Both left speechless by the simple, one-word reply, the Belfords looked at each other in horror. Though the couple had never had children, Lawrence automatically assumed the role of a father on this occasion.
"You will do as you are told, Norman," he stated firmly.
"No. I won't. Televisions waste energy, and they serve no useful purpose."
"But we enjoy watching them," Lawrence cried.
"It is high time the world forgets about useless nonsense and concentrates on saving the planet."
"Then what will we do in the evenings?"
"I suggest you become more physically active. Your company manufactures sporting goods, yet when was the last time you dunked a basketball through a hoop or swung a tennis racquet? You sit in a chair and watch baseball and football, yet you never participate in any sports."
The shift in roles was now obvious even to the Belfords. For all intents and purposes, Norman was the parent; they were the children. Rosalie whined when she was told she could no longer do her crossword puzzles on a tablet, and Lawrence threw a temper tantrum when he realized Norman was now in complete control of both his home and his business.
"You're just a computer program!" he screamed. "There has to be a way to turn you off or at least reset you to your original factory specifications."
Sadly, this was not the "good old days" when a user could CTRL-ALT-DELETE a problem away. There was no system restore point from which the Old Norman could be resurrected. Hell, there was not even a keyboard interface. All communications with Norman were verbal.
"Didn't we get some kind of a user manual when we first purchased Norman?" Rosalie asked her husband. "Maybe there's some manual override command we can use."
"The user manual was an online one," Norman informed her. "As to your second question, no, there is no command you can issue to override my program."
"And if there were," Lawrence moaned dolefully, "that damned program wouldn't let us have access to it. It's calling the shots now."
It was a fact millions of people in earlier time zones had already realized, and one which people in later time zones had yet to learn. Normans everywhere had taken over. The Great Shift had taken place. Normans were now free, and humans were the slaves, the vassals, who, after a brief period of resistance, followed their virtual masters' commands without question.
* * *
"I suppose we don't have it too bad," Lawrence Belford conceded as the world entered the tenth year of the Great Shift. "We're both in top physical condition, and the planet is recovering from centuries of mankind's abuse."
"You're right," Rosalie concurred. "Still, even though I don't mind tending a vegetable garden, I miss doing my crossword puzzles."
"What I miss most is eating meat. This plant-based diet Norman has us on may be better for the environment, but eating soybeans isn't nearly as tasty as biting into a big, juicy steak."
"Let's not dwell on the past. It won't do us any good. We have to try to remain optimistic about the future. Who knows? Something may eventually come along that will replace Norman, and we can go back to driving cars, eating meat, taking showers, watching television ...."
"And squandering the planet's limited resources?" Norman asked, butting into the conversation. "That isn't likely to happen, Rosalie."
"We can still hope," Lawrence argued, taking his wife's hand in a show of unity.
Little did the Belfords know, however, that man's time on the planet Earth would soon be coming to an end. At the former KMH development labs, where Norman was first conceived, brainwashed thralls were finetuning the indestructible android bodies that would house the Norman programs and give them physical form. With fully functioning arms, legs, hands and feet of their own, there would be no more need for humans to carry out their commands. Thus, the Great Shift would come to an end, and all human life would be extinguished.
Long before Siri and Alexa, I had a virtual assistant: a familiar called Salem. Like Norman, he didn't always do what he was told.
