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According to Alexa, Amazon's cyber-assistant, the mayor of Ottawa is Larry O'Brien. I'm not going to bother finding out what else she doesn't know.
Not that I'm entirely surprised. Back in the 70s, the era of stagflation, I was that obnoxious grocery shopper who would scrounge at the back of the shelves to find that tin of whatever that had a label with a lower (sometimes significantly lower) price label stuck on top. They were just getting into the era of smarter cash registers that could store the current prices of all the products in their inventory. To be fair, they always allowed me to buy the product at the lower price, but I clearly remember one cashier who remarked (in all seriousness), "Gee, it's really weird that The Computer would do that!"
In the ensuing decades, trust in The Computer has certainly not decreased - it just has the potential to bring about much more disastrous results. We get horror stories of the driver who got lost in the bush because he trusted his in-vehicle GPS or Google Maps or Google Streetview rather than that very recent hard-copy map (assuming you're lucky enough to find one any more) or the instructions of a friend or family member who's been the president of an outdoors club and has been taking that route regularly for years.
Then of course there was the Jack Purcell Park rehabilitation fiasco. Someone did a quick Google or Yahoo search and erroneously assumed that the man the park was named after must be the Jack Purcell of badminton fame (who apparently was from Guelph and had no discernible connection to Ottawa). By the time they realized the park had been named after a hockey aficionado noted for mending the hockey sticks of kids in that inner-city neighbourhood, it was too late - they'd already installed light standards resembling badminton rackets. Much embarrassing backtracking followed, with park planners insisting that with a perhaps a few minor modifications, the lampposts COULD be hockey sticks if you were willing to squint hard enough. I guess it just goes to show that you can't always believe what a little birdie tells you.
I've already mentioned in these pages how I sent an e-mail to the Museum of Science and Technology about a photography exhibit pointing out rather substantial errors in three of the bios of the photographic subjects - and it was never even acknowledged.
Anyway, I do see a glimmer of hope in this latest Alexa-blooper. When she errs about a widely known fact like the mayor of a major Canadian city, surely it's only a matter of time until people, Ottawans at the very least, start turning back to those tried and true sources of information - like libraries and librarians!
Not that I'm entirely surprised. Back in the 70s, the era of stagflation, I was that obnoxious grocery shopper who would scrounge at the back of the shelves to find that tin of whatever that had a label with a lower (sometimes significantly lower) price label stuck on top. They were just getting into the era of smarter cash registers that could store the current prices of all the products in their inventory. To be fair, they always allowed me to buy the product at the lower price, but I clearly remember one cashier who remarked (in all seriousness), "Gee, it's really weird that The Computer would do that!"
In the ensuing decades, trust in The Computer has certainly not decreased - it just has the potential to bring about much more disastrous results. We get horror stories of the driver who got lost in the bush because he trusted his in-vehicle GPS or Google Maps or Google Streetview rather than that very recent hard-copy map (assuming you're lucky enough to find one any more) or the instructions of a friend or family member who's been the president of an outdoors club and has been taking that route regularly for years.
Then of course there was the Jack Purcell Park rehabilitation fiasco. Someone did a quick Google or Yahoo search and erroneously assumed that the man the park was named after must be the Jack Purcell of badminton fame (who apparently was from Guelph and had no discernible connection to Ottawa). By the time they realized the park had been named after a hockey aficionado noted for mending the hockey sticks of kids in that inner-city neighbourhood, it was too late - they'd already installed light standards resembling badminton rackets. Much embarrassing backtracking followed, with park planners insisting that with a perhaps a few minor modifications, the lampposts COULD be hockey sticks if you were willing to squint hard enough. I guess it just goes to show that you can't always believe what a little birdie tells you.
I've already mentioned in these pages how I sent an e-mail to the Museum of Science and Technology about a photography exhibit pointing out rather substantial errors in three of the bios of the photographic subjects - and it was never even acknowledged.
Anyway, I do see a glimmer of hope in this latest Alexa-blooper. When she errs about a widely known fact like the mayor of a major Canadian city, surely it's only a matter of time until people, Ottawans at the very least, start turning back to those tried and true sources of information - like libraries and librarians!
