DANGERS OF KEYPAD'S AUTOCORRECT

No doubt, the keypad AI is supposed to be a smartphone users' best friend, but how it has and is still striving to be an enemy is this part of the world is disturbing. Its advent and evolution has been pretty amazing, fine the T9 mode to what it has become today. If you are not so blessed to grace the 3310, the 2210, the Sagems, Sendos and Birds of this world, you might not really understand the T9 (text on 9 keys) prediction mode.

For natural born typists, the auto correct could be a nightmare, particularly when there's so much to let out through finger tips. That, I believe, is supposed to be one of the major objectives of the keypad AI, to help string words easier and faster.

Why the sudden rant on an innocent software that is meant to correct me blunders It has landed me into troubles more than it has helped. I could remember several years back during a chat, I innocently started a conversation with a very good friend, only for her to send me 'madman ke' when I meant to refer to her as 'madam'. Quite unbelievable, I must say, but I found myself apologizing for some minutes. Perhaps the auto correct was asleep at the time and just suggested whatever.

On Official notes, I have seen myself apologize countless number of times over misspellings of names just because the auto correct tries to make a point - 'I know more than you do. That is why I'm here'. That moment when someone sends you a message via a real time messenger and you harmlessly mean to respond and go 'Good afternoon, Mr Monsoon' (and then you tap send without realizing Mr NONSO has been transformed to Mr MONSOON ) and then you have to start looking for a way to undo the damage as you keep murmuring 'chai' to yourself. This is true story though. Unfortunately, those on the other end don't realize what one faces, even in the midst of the many apologies.

I could go on and on in painting rib cracking scenarios but it would not change the fact that the auto correct is all that help to those of us who hate inflectional words which are often termed 'informal' in formal settings. While some would come to say the auto correct is designed for English words and common words, and not Nigerian languages, it would amuse you that the auto correct could lead one to a point of no return if one allows it to lead. I have a huge apology to tender at the office after auto correct did its thing again yesternight. Fortunately, it's a colleague, it still does not take out the fact that the keypad AI isn't all that intelligent.

I guess I might just have to show this to my colleague later on to prove my innocence and to show my apology is indeed genuine over an epic auto correct fail.

NB: The pictures below are sourced for online. There are tens of thousands of them flooding cyber space.