In the Event of an Emergency

Today, I was reassured, via Twitter, that Facebook would inform my friends that I was safe in the event of an emergency.

This is either reassuring, or sort of chilling. I’m not surprised the old book of Face would know my location. I tell it where I am all the time.

But what I’m concerned about is, does Facebook actually know what constitutes an emergency? I mean, I’ve seen some of my virtual friends get pretty up in arms about things like broken heels on shoes, for example, or bad service at a restaurant. Will Facebook update my friends the next time I survive a substandard waiter at The Outback?

As comforting as it would be to have the support of that girl from high school whom I haven’t seen in twenty-three years, the one I wouldn’t recognize if I ran into her in the street, if say, my DVR box fails to record Scandal…do we really need our machines to do this much thinking and communicating for us? How many steps away from Skynet are we, really? Should I start stocking up on canned goods, I wonder? Or should I start small and start trying to like the food that comes in canned-good form, maybe?

Things are moving very, very fast. Already, poor Siri’s voice sounds silly and robotic in those HTC commercials. Even though she was a marvel just a few years ago, now, in comparison to the new phone-girl (Cortalana? Catalano? Who comes up with these names?) Siri seems like one of those video games from my childhood that looked like this:

 

This was actually seriously cool, once.

I guess everything is a marvel when it’s new, and then it’s a relic before you know it.  I just hope if there’s another rough hurricane season next year, Facebook will tell my friends to send snack food. And possibly a generator.