In the wake of Steve Jobs death and the release of the iPhone 4S featuring Siri, a responsive computerized personal assistant, videos featuring the slightly feminine, robotic Siri have hit the Web.
So far, the clear favorite is by Jonathan Man, a singer/songwriter who’s famous for producing a song a day for over 1000 days on YouTube. His most recent vid, “A Duet With Siri” was recorded and uploaded yesterday. While highlighting many of Siri’s fun Easter eggs (i.e.: “What is the meaning of life?” “42.”), Jonathan professes his love for Siri and asks for her hand in marriage, much to Siri’s annoyance. The worst part? My coworkers can’t stop singing it. At 2:30 length, the song is simple, stupid, hilarious, and all too catchy.
Sung to a ballad melody, Jonathan whines to Siri asking if she loves him, telling her she’s beautiful, and of course proposing marriage…a ridiculous number of times. Siri responds to this treatment in her usual slightly sarcastic and irritated tone, as if being tortured by Jonathan to be forced to reply over and over to such ineptitude. That said, honestly, it’s comic genius, and if you don’t laugh at Jonathan’s latest video, we figure you’re just as grumpy as Siri is with humans.
Perhaps Jonathan’s natural funny bone explains how he made himself so popular. Even the Late Steve Jobs used his iPhone Antenna Song at Apple’s Antenna-gate conference. His website also mentions that Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak has contracted the songwriter for projects.
At the end of the day, it’s just fun to watch a computer try to cope with the baffling logic or lack thereof of man or the reverse. Just like Hal 9000 with Dave, “Open the pod bay doors, Hal,” Will Smith in iRobot with VIKI or C-3P0 and Darth Vader in this Star Wars re-edit. For some reason, man and machine have never been more interesting than when trying to comprehend one another. We can only imagine the wave of viral Siri interaction to follow.
For more on Siri, see Siri Comes With Jokes.
