The Life-Bot Balance

How much time do you spend on your phone, tablet, and computer? Chances are, over 50 percent of your day (including work) is spent in the digital realm, and that’s just with average use.

We have bots to thank for this.

- Carmela Maraan Fernando

BUT WHAT ARE BOTS?

A bot is an application that performs a specific automated task, such as setting your alarm, indicating the weather, helping you search for information, or placing an online pizza delivery order. Also known as internet robots, spiders, crawlers, or web bots, they are designed to perform boring and repetitive tasks like compiling sales leads from multiple platforms, entering information into legacy systems, or scheduling your social media posts in advance.

These bots are meant to free up our time to allow us to focus better on tasks that require more complex mental and physical skills.

One of the most well-known bots from a couple of decades back is Microsoft Word’s Clippy, the animated paper clip assistant that was either endearing or annoying. Siri and Cortana are also bots, as well as Tay, Microsoft’s teenage chatbot that was designed for entertainment but ended up tweeting sexually offensive and racist slurs. Oops.

While bots can make much of our digital based tasks easier, some also come in the form of malware.

GOOD BOTS VS. BAD BOTS

One of the typical constructive functions for a ‘good’ bot is to gather and index information, as web crawlers do. Another is to perform as our virtual assistants, such as with instant messaging, instant relay chat, serving up specific information to users based on their programs, and to provide entertainment.