Robo-Poll

Clockwork Robot…
Originally uploaded by law_keven

I have a landline, but I rarely use it. Usually it’s for stuff like calling the Chinese delivery place a couple blocks over, and so I have something that really works well in my Condo. It’s not that I get calls on it. Except this morning when it rang about 10:15am. It was a robo-call, I could tell immediately, but I gave it a second to rattle off its spiel before deciding it wasn’t going to waste my time or try to sell me more credit than I need.

It asked five simple questions and the whole thing took 30 seconds:

- Who would you vote for if the election was today?
- Which party do you trust with the economy right now?
- What’s your gender?
- What’s your race?
- What’s your age group?

And away it went. But it was all automated. It wasn’t a real person making minimum wage in a call center, it was a robot doing the polling. I got a little sad. Are you telling me there’s no Josh Lyman standing over a group of midwestern transplants and telling them to spit out their gum?! Sigh. The price of progress.

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