According to Apple ten-digit numbers are phone numbers.
For that reason, whenever I select a ten-digit number on my iPad, it helpfully insists that I do one of two things: 1) dial that ten-digit number on my iPad, or 2) cancel that call.
If I want to do something strange — for instance, copy that number in order to paste it somewhere — this iPad Pro is at a complete loss. Apparently, that is a use case nobody in that big glass doughnut anticipated.
More and more I am noting the hard-coding of anticipations into our lives.
When I select some text, my device tries to anticipate what I might want to do with that text and tries to anticipate what someone like me with probable intentions they would have would probably want to do next, and it makes it effortless to do it, but also forces me to work harder to do anything else.
When I’m writing AI tries to anticipate the next word someone saying a sentence like the one I am saying will say next, and it basically feeds me the most likely and least unexpected next word. It is already hard enough to think against the grain of one’s time, but now we are electronically prodded toward conventionality word-by-word in real time as we try to express the thoughts we are trying to have. Gently, but incessantly, we are bent toward rethought.
And recommendation engines have replaced serendipity with engineered epiphany. Where pure chance juxtapositions sparked originality in the minds of imaginative interpreters, now most juxtapositions are algorithmically-generated merchandising, designed to fabricate a spark of inspiration that will compel the desired purchase behavior.
And news stories, of course, are fed to us according to our ideological taste, which is the same taste as those like us. And by “those like us” I mean those who have been subjected to the same ideological molding process we have, who now not only believe the same facts we have, but have been intellectually pattered to reason along the same lines by the same sociological and psychological theories, and emotionally conditioned to feel the same responses to the same moral categories. And if something does not match the fact-set, reason-process and emotion-response patterns, “I can’t understand why.” “It does not make sense.” This auto-argument-by-incredulity is the error handling routine encoded into this populace.
The more we go along with what is suggested and accept the conveniences offered to us, the more our minds are intricately patterned for conformity. We automatically notice (and ignore) the things everyone else notices (snd ignores), think them through using the same logic, and come to the same conclusions everyone around us has reached.
I guess what I am really trying to say is that users should always have the option to copy a string of characters, even a ten-digit string of numbers that looks like a phone number.