Everything seems to beep. Phones, cars, pdas, computers, microwaves, tvs, dvd players. And refrigerators, of course. Pretty much everything that requires electricity to beep does beep.
My toddler speaks about 8 words, one of which is "beep." That leads me to believe that his environment is as full of beeping as it is with "Mam" and "Papa." That seems like a lot.
(My reasoning could be a little flawed here, since one of his other eight is "Goggles," which he only sees when Papa puts them on as part of his costume to fight crime, which is rarely, nowadays.)
But who came up with that particular noise? I mean, maybe beeping only annoys me because it is so prevalent, but why not a click? Or a thump? Or a hum, a buzz, a cough, a tinkle, a rattle, a crunch?
It's not like "the beep" exists in the natural world. That specific sound wasn't chosen because it reminded us, as humans, of something familiar, was it?
Now, with sound technology being what it is, you'd think we would move on. But we don't.
I'm thinking that, as a people, we're keeping the beep not only because we're used to it, but because we actually are hard-wired to respond to it. It seems like the only reasonable explanation. Just like a baby's cry, "the beep" hits just the right frequency to cause notice and/or alarm.
So. Based on this ironclad data, I conclude that we are genetically prepared to be either:
A. Overlords of a nation of robot slaves,
B. Slaves to a nation of Robot Overlords, or
C. Parents of tiny machine babies.
So I'd get comfortable rocking your toaster to sleep, because if there is one thing that slaves, overlords, and babies all share, it's a longing to fall asleep cradled by arms of meat.
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