More than "they"

I'd counter this article with the assurance that the writer is far from a "faceless other."

Speaking for myself, these people are more than last weekend's takeout or the Made In on a product label. They're cutesy animal onesies I've seen (still in 意大利?) and parental admonitions I've heard that echo those from my relatives. They're long-standing food traditions and recent transactions, decades-old household ceramics and a selection in the IME dropdown menu (still there, 微软 - I'd consider those who work on this technology about as "helpless" and "mindless" as the article writer herself).

If the writer's looking for a narrative, I can only offer one that is as caught between both sides as her own, one that can acknowledge where heavy-handed ideas in governance could remedy issues in lives closer to home as easily as they could risk those same lives, who nevertheless has stumbled upon reasons enough to see one is not the peacemaker it sometimes paints itself to be, not in the characters that change from dictionary to dictionary and petty pleasantries that last only until one's back is turned.

To me, the writer is quite human, and what I see is real; while the surrounding context has changed, the core I choose to resist has not.

Weather eye on these issues here.

Tough to miss this issue here.

Ending with these articles because it's nice to think that somehow, somewhere, something human is ready for aliens.