I smart therefore I am

Smartness has always been a holy grail for most people. However, smartness is difficult to quantify. I mean all IQ tests are kind of discriminatory, they always work in favour of smart people so HR will not allow it. Biological evidence could be taken as a proxy but that too is challenging e.g. A dog has 76 chromosomes, 30 more than the average human but if you were to observe any dog, you cannot be blamed for concluding that all those 30 extra chromosomes are required mostly to smell other butts and keep your special parts wet. Today smartness has seeped into devices where its impact is felt rather strongly. A regulation smart cufflink has more intelligence than my dog Sandy (Seriously when was the last time you saw a cufflink try and smell other butts? huh?). Smart watch, Smart phone, Smart ass (short for assistant) and it is indeed a challenge for humans to feel smart. However there are still some pockets where smart devices are waiting to be made where humans can still feel smart ,,,for now. But can you imagine when the following smart products are available eg.

a) Smart PowerPoint

How often have you found yourself in a hostage situation in a locked room with 5 other people while the terrorist takes charge of the laptop and open his PowerPoint, and your gaze goes down to bottom right where it says, “Slide 1 of 93”. With no way to get out and impossible to last that long, you just hope there is a fire in the office which would help you bolt out through the meeting room with the speed of a 7 year old at an ice cream buffet. Worry no more. A smart PowerPoint version will sync with the meeting calendar and see the meeting duration and make the oversized PowerPoint file impossible to open after which the presenter would have to sheepishly say “We are having technical issues but our main gist was ..” and proceed to give the summary with minutes still left over. Future versions would support plug in devices like a giant palm which will come out and slap the presenter silly every time he just reads off the slide or says, “In the interest of time, I will skip these slides”.

b) Smart room

The meeting rooms will become smart. In fact, as per a recent consulting study which no one will bother to look up, by 2030, a meeting room can have an entire meeting all by itself without any human participation. But for now, meetings require that critical
component…Humans …and with that the critical aspect which makes us human i.e. stupidity. But smart rooms can arrest that and the next time, anyone in a meeting says terms like value add, competitive differentiation, low hanging fruit etc, the smart rooms go in an emergency mode bring out the giant palm from a above and let it do its job. The palm mode also has a turbo setting for high attention 3 rd party jargon statements. We managed to get our hand on the algo which is:

IF STATEMENT = “As per a recent study by << insert impressive agency>> , << insert latest buzzword>> will be a << insert a number from a Bond villain>> dollar industry by 2030”

ACTION “Activate (Giant Palm) ” CASE (iron_glove) Init_Position = AS_HIGH_AS_IT_CAN_GO REPEAT Till Mic_Input = “Sorry Sorry..I won’t do it again”

With this jargon eliminating algorithm, meetings can now be shortened, and the same state of dysfunction can be achieved in an even shorter time leading to a high efficiency productivity which can deliver meaningless decisions quicker.

c) Smart telco

Covid has proved to us how valuable it is to have a business continuity plan. In fact, many companies since then have focussed on their business continuity plans even ahead of their business. Should another contagion which sounds like a Korean boy band hit us, management is well prepared with reserves of toilet paper, sanitisers and conspiracy theories. One part of this business continuity plans was to have a remote working set up in place of which telecons are a critical part. Before telecons, people had to talk to themselves and ignore it but thanks to telecons, they can talk while others pretend to listen with their cameras off to “save bandwidth”. Without this saved bandwidth it would be difficult to obsessively scroll TikTok videos on the side, like a gold medallist at the OCD Olympics, Smart telco software can now immediately detect telecon drifts when people start saying “Can you repeat that, the line was bad”, “John… John …are you there?” etc. The smart telecon plugin can also pre-emptively assess upcoming useless telecons by scrutinising email invites which have pre read attachments that are just 1 volume short of qualifying for a library license. It will automatically kick out any recipients who start off with “I have read it but can you summarise the key points of your ask?”. So, humans, enjoy your smartness while you can and stop and smell the butts.