"Turing test" entries

Sentience and Old Code

Like many private detectives, “I didn’t get into this business on account of my interpersonal skills. I’m not what you would call a people person.” Even in the future, some stereotypes hold. The secretary is now an “indy”, code that Richie Boss can communicate with silently. He doesn’t often need to leave his desk, but there is still plenty of danger out there.

A storage device with USB (“in primary use from 1995 to 2028”) and wireless connectors. Emulation of ancient devices. Armies of ‘indies’, code that handles a variety of specialty analysis and work. The problem:

So either Pandora’s great-grandmother was one of hundreds who puttered and failed to develop old-timey “artificial intelligence,” or we had something very special on hand. Only one way to find out.

You should find out too.

I was delighted to find Micah Dubinko‘s short story, Ritchie Boss, Private Investigator Manager, on a table at Balisage last week. I’m more used to reading Micah’s long ago work for O’Reilly, but this glued me to my seat and wouldn’t let me go until I’d finished it.

Micah’s story is under a Creative Commons license, but won a contest to be included in Springer’s Finding Source Code on the Web for Remix and Reuse. Whoever decided that book needed to close with a fictional look into the future has my deepest thanks, as does Micah.

Update: Here’s the contest, as well as an interview between Micah and Susan Sims.

Being online: What you say about yourself, or selves

Sociological research about online participation says more about the
fringes of identity than everyday activity. This section of the
identity article explores how we present unified or fragmented selves.