Predictive Text

A day before I started writing this post, I started working on it on my phone, and just like the average phone user, whenever I typed a letter or word on my keyboard, I would get 3 suggestions of what I might want to type next. Be it that the ‘suggested’ text was based on my previous typing patterns or general, common typing patterns in my region or among people with similar interests as me, I can’t tell, I’m not behind the data collection team at Apple. One thing still got to me, there were always suggestions, even before I started typing. Then I realized, the same thing happens to me and to me among many of the people I come across, we make predictions, based on what we have been fed and what we consume over time. Some of our predictions or prejudices, based on nothing but the very fact that we mirror the same behavior, others, maybe based on ‘experience’.

Agree? Our phones work for us in mysterious ways. Seems spiritual sometimes. Sometimes, helping us make the right decisions or type more meaningful messages. Predictive text has helped some of us duck from profanity. It’s in this ducking that we realize we might have been wrong for conspiring to call that one person a nagger before we knew what their history is all about. Great tool for protection, especially in a world where every single word is so fragile that with a single slip, it can destroy your life’s work. Cancelled. Before we cancel the probability by simply understanding what we assume, before expressing it.

I am a huge believer in “we can have very different experiences of the same event or person”, but what actually happens before? Before we have bad experiences with a certain group of people, what does our mind feed us before we set off and interact with them? What is the ‘predictive text’ saying, when you say “Hi, where are you from?” to a person who looks totally different from you? The simplest of interactions can unveil the most complex constructs our societies are built upon by a simple sentence or word or, facial expression. Depending on who you are, or where you are reading this from, you are either the person typing or the phone giving out the predictive text.

We have a huge inclination to think that we are wiser than most people. We think we had seen whatever bad happens coming. We deem ourselves prophets yet we never warn anyone of the danger that is about to come, we only highlight that we knew about it once the milk has been spilled. Are we true prophets then or are we predictive text merchants? The idea that we can think of ourselves as foreseers of events only after they happen should be off us. We are simply liars, not to the world, but to ourselves. If you predict something, show it, like your phone does, if you are wrong most of the time then you are not a prophet or maybe you should turn away from predictive text living because clearly, the world isn’t built like that. There is a lot more to the aspect of being human or rather just a living being than meets the eye, and this translates to our thoughts as well. Not all people who look like that have that behavior. And not all people who have that behavior look exactly how we predict they look.

When I was in high school, writing my O-Levels, we had debates every fortnight at Westgate Mall, and just like most people in boarding school, getting a good haircut was a rare occurrence in the middle of some Zimbabwean rural area. So, being the “elegant” boys that we were, we would never miss the opportunity for a clean fade whenever this trip came about. On one occasion, a Friday, one of my friends, who was also one of if not the smartest person in my class, did the thing, he got a fade. Our principal, the following Monday, had an inclination towards embarrassing rebels during our school assemblies. Being the man he is/was, he called my friend up to stand beside him. He said a few lines about rebel behavior, obviously referencing the haircut, and how it leads to bad performance in academics, and used this guy as an example, the smartest kid in school and a great debate analyst and scribe. Not only was this unfolding of events funny, it was embarrassing, his predictive text got to his mouth before the important questions did. The man leading not only the students, but the entire staff team’s “when you fail to decorate your mind, you decorate your head” statement was not true, it was his predictive text and everyone except for him knew this. I wonder whether he recognized it or not when he handed out a good chunk of academic prizes to the same person a few months later, or if he thought his wisdom had worked as good advice for the boy.

People have a weird thing about hairstyles. The prettier the hairstyle, the more likely that people are not going to take you seriously, something I find very funny considering how much smart people are involved in fashion nowadays. Every other person wants you to look “decent” in their eyes for them to consider you a proper, respectable person worth a conversation. Some may even go on to suggest a wig so that you resemble some culture or appearance they deem superior, but if the power of our minds came from our hairstyles, wouldn’t it be simple to just send a kid to school with the appropriate hairstyle each day and be guaranteed that their grades are going to be excellent? If that is the only way to make it, it is a small price to pay for salvation. Jobs would be so much easier to get and product and service selection would never need much thought, yet the biggest scammers are the “they were well presented I never thought they could do such a thing” type. Our predictions and stereotypes are now what is used against us because we fall out of being human and ignore instincts when an appealing look meets the eye. As heavy consumers, especially of short-form content, we are more likely to get things at face value, our attention spans are screwed over and our observant eye is legally blind.

My main objective is to be blind. Justice should be blind. People should be blind. Sport should be blind. Admissions should be blind. The hate, envy, and jealousy we carry around should be blind. It simply fascinates me how much of a new world we can create when we are blinded, not by the things we consume, but by the canvases on which we wish to create. I fell in love with this concept because it has no predictive text, just like a plain sheet of paper. There are no suggestions, no “This is how you have started a sentence before and so you might want to do it again now”, just you, your pen or pencil, a huge mind, and a blank paper. That’s just the beginning. Shutting everything you know down is your first creation and bringing what you want to see to light is the first form of self-expression. Of course, I am aware of patterns and how they might manifest right in front of you. When the pen starts blotting, it might be time to simply let it go, it’s not functional anymore. be blind to the blank paper but wise enough to know what comes after your pencil isn’t as sharp anymore. Never forget what you saw before you chose to be blind, it might save you.