Virtual Assistants Raise New Issues of Phone Etiquette
The sound of someone gabbing on a cellphone is part of the soundtrack of daily life, and most of us have learned when to be quiet — no talking in “quiet cars” on trains, for example.
But the etiquette of talking to a phone — more precisely, to a “virtual assistant” like Apple’s Siri, in the new iPhone 4S — has not yet evolved. And eavesdroppers are becoming annoyed.
In part, that is because conversations with machines have a robotic, unsettling quality. Then there is the matter of punctuation. If you want it, you have to say it.
“How is he doing question mark how are you doing question mark,” Jeremy Littau of Bethlehem, Pa., found himself telling his new iPhone recently as he walked down the street, dictating a text message to his wife, who was home with their newborn. The machine spoke to him in Siri’s synthesized female voice.
Passers-by gawked. “It’s not normal human behavior to have people having a conversation with a phone on the street,” concluded Mr. Littau, 36, an assistant professor of journalism and communication at Lehigh University.
The technology behind voice-activated mobile phones has been around for a few years — allowing people to order their phones around like digital factotums, commanding them to dictate text messages, jot down appointments on their calendars and search for nearby sushi restaurants. Apple, though, has taken it to another level with Siri.
“Happy birthday smiley face,” was what Dani Klein heard a man say to his phone on the Long Island Rail Road, using the command to insert a grinning emoticon into a message.
“It sounded ridiculous,” said Mr. Klein, 28, who works in social media marketing.
Talking to your phone is so new that there are no official rules yet on, say, public transportation systems.