Who Is What
“Dining,”
I said into the phone.
No response.
“Dining,”
I repeated and waited.
“You know this is a real person, right?”
I started to apologize
But the voice cut me off,
“Just kidding,
you said ‘Dining’ -
let’s get you to the right place.”
Wait, what?
Did a machine just pretend
to be a human?
Did a person just impersonate
a recording?
My confusion lasted
exactly as long as it took
to connect with the
restaurant reservation system;
just as millions of dollars
in research and consumer analytics
no doubt predicted it would.
