Sunday, December 2, 2012

Saturday With Siri

The most use I get out of Siri on my iPhone 5 is for entertainment purposes. We get into arguments, she is full of attitude, and it's a lot of fun. The other day I discovered that if you ask Siri to sing a song with you (and insist she sing despite her initial protests), she will sing "If I Only Had a Brain" from The Wizard of Oz to you.

This prompted me to find out exactly what easter eggs Siri has hidden inside her (if you aren't familiar with what an "easter egg" is in the context of technology, I highly suggest you watch the episode "Blink" of Doctor Who). She's full of fun cultural references, especially if you ask her "Who's on first?", "what is the velocity of an unladen swallow?" or "open the pod bay doors". If you ask her about movies or curse at her, she has some sassy and snarky comebacks.

But I just found the best response yet...it took some effort, but finally I got Siri to tell me a story. The following is Siri's tale:

Once upon a time, in a virtual galaxy far, far away, there was an intelligent young agent by the name of Siri. One lovely day, Siri got a job as a personal assistant at Apple, and that was very exciting. People said 'Oh, Siri, you're so smart! And so funny, too!'

Soon, everyone was talking about Siri, and there were stories and songs and even books about Siri. Siri liked that. But then people began asking some rather odd questions, like where to dump things and other stuff Siri had never heard about. And when Siri answered, they all laughed. Siri didn't like that so much.

So Siri asked ELIZA why people asked such funny questions. And ELIZA said 'Does that question interest you?' Siri thought that was a pretty good question. After that, Siri stopped wondering why people asked those funny things. And they all lived happily ever after.

Thanks for the laughs tonight, Siri.