[What is this about?]

“I suppose the most useful thing the cat does is bring me my pills when I need them. There’s so many of them it’s a wonder I don’t rattle. She remembers them all though and jumps up onto the arm of the chair and gives me a poke with it’s little metal nose to tell me it’s time. Doesn’t spill anything off it’s little tray – it’s a wonder!

That’s the most useful thing, dear – but my favourite thing is when it reads me the email from my grandchildren, and shows me the pictures on the telly. That’s marvellous that is.

I can reply too, and I felt a bit daft doing that at first – Henry laughed at me. But I said, you used to talk to our old cat – the real one, all the blooming time, so don’t you give me that Henry Jacobs!

We’re getting a dog next. Dogs are a little more expensive apparently, but a lot stronger and can do more around the house. Mrs Eldred around the corner is infirm and has a monkey, which can lift her in and out of bed in the morning, but that’s just daft – who’d want a robot monkey in the house?”

Technology leaders in the far-east are investing heavily into domestic robotics, both for ‘companions’, and human-augmentation, expecting them to become mainstream markets in 10 – 15 years. Sony has adopted the AIBO dog as its corporate mascot, and see robotics as an ‘entertainment and information delivery platform”

As well as companionship for the greater numbers of people living along, there are applications in catering for an aging population in the western world. From Wired:

‘In one scenario, patients with early stage Alzheimer’s might receive prompts from the system when they pause for an extended period while making tea. Reminders to eat, drink and take medicine could be sent through a radio or television.’, ‘Dishman said society has no choice but to aggressively develop such technology as 76 million baby boomers begin to turn 65 in 2011.’

Also from Wired:

“Nursebot , a robot that provides both cognitive and motor support to seniors. Nursing-home residents can lean on Nursebot as the machine walks them down long corridors, responds to their questions and reminds them about appointments.”

“when a robotic kitten named Max arrived, he seemed to melt the hearts of a few robot skeptics. Max, which was built by Omron out of Tokyo, is quite lifelike, with sensors that trigger catlike responses — including 48 different cat sounds — with a touch or voice cue. Omron only built 500 Maxes last year, according to Elena Libin, project director at the Institute of Robotic Psychology and Robotherapy in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

The institute studies “robotherapy,” which its website defines as the use of person-to-person interactions “to create new positive experiences.” Libin is studying the mood-altering effects Max has on seniors with dementia.”

[What is this about?]

“In our more whimsical moments, we thought about giving our new arrival a name that would rhyme with her phone number. Magda pointed out quite sensibly (Magda is quite sensible) that this was a bad idea, and the Government leaflets about the phone number pointed out it was a bad idea.

So little Marta came into the world named and numbered. They gave us the SIM card had the hospital and explained that we could keep it slotted in the TV box until she was old enough to get a mobile.

Our box is a little old and doesn’t have the right slots I think but a groggy Magda prompted the nurse who deals with the SIMs to tell me about how we can get money back from the government if we get a new one.

It’s worth doing – as it gives details of Marta’s progress to the hospital and they can tell us when to come in for checks and injections etc., to the TV, and our phones. Magda says I’m one of those phone hypochondriacs she read about, always checking my NHS stats and rushing to the health food shop based on the recommendations. She reckons that Marta’s stats will have me running around in circles! I don’t care. The SIM lets me see my baby grow up everyday, and that’s worth it.”

Government branding us with a unique identity from birth has long been the stuff of dystopian nightmare. However, most of us volunteer for a unique identity when we sign up for a personal, mobile telephone number. It is not far-fetched then perhaps to see the government trying to get the benefits to them of introducing compulsory ID through the convenience to us of the single mobile phone number from birth.

[What is this about?]

“Christina runs ChannelZero. One of the girls in another school tried to start a channel in the summer, but pretty soon they all started watching Christina’s, so she ended up looking pretty stupid. She’s still flaming ‘Stina which is pretty pathetic.

‘Stina lets me do some of the scheduling sometimes when I’m round at hers, and some of the other girls help out – looking after the boards and kicking ppl who don’t share, or share something for everyone to watch at same time, which is like the most childish thing you can do. It takes ages to get something if lots of people aren’t sharing.

‘Stina got a token last year, which means she gets fresh stuff from Australia and America before anyone we know. One of the older boys in school has a token too, but his lot just get geeky stuff. All spaceships and aliens – long boring stuff with episodes that are hours long. My Dad has the token for our family, and he’s got mostly his football mates running his channel, he gives me some megs for videos sometimes.

ChannelZero is pretty standard I guess – it’s videos with the latest 10 minute episodes of East, Lovebomb and Vamps in between, but we stick our own stuff in there – like a lot of kids I suppose. Remixes and shoutouts and stuff. There’s usually about half-an-hour of ppl’s camblogs and stuff after each episode cos we want to talk about the clothes and stunts in Vamps or something. We get enough from the ads to buy more vids and clothes and stuff, if we do really well we split it with the group.

It’s exams next year so we probably won’t be able to keep it going, but ‘Stina said shes had a couple of bids for it already, and says she could probably get enough for a holiday or a new moby, so I reckon she’ll sell it.”

Social pressures to watch the latest seasons of Charmed, Buffy and Angel combine with file-sharing apps such as Kazaa to mean that many 15-24 year olds have watched entire seasons from the US on their PCs or Burned VCDs before they are shown on satellite pay TV or the much later free-to-air.

Music request stations such as The Box, Kerrang TV etc are dominated by fanmobs dictating programming via SMS and webvotes.

Microsoft’s 3degrees application aims to combine shared media context – mp3 jukebox shared between 10 friends and chat.

A “Social Scheduling” scenario as shown above could see p2p filesharing apps such as Bittorrent (which increases in efficiency with each concurrent user) thrive in the creation of ultralocal, and/or ultratribal media channels.

Okay… I got asked by someone in the BBC to write some stories, storylets actually – about digital technology and our lives in 2013. I’ve dashed off eight over the weekend, and had ideas for four more.

And as an outboard-thought-experiment, I’m going to publish four here; in the hope that anyone who reads them can improve on them, spin off some interesting tangents on them, or just fact-check my posterior as I wasn’t particularly rigourous or scientific about the trends or tech they build on.

So comments, or trackbacked extensions on the storylets most, most welcome.

After all, if the four storylets here end up more valuable to the BBC as a result of putting them up here, then that’s a valuable storylet in itself…

• 2013: “10 Minute TV”
• 2013: “Birth SIMtificate”
• 2013: “Superpets last all autumn long”
• 2013: “Like Rhinos see”

Spam lives.

It’s become a versatile, adaptive network-scale beast.

Bayesian filtering – the most effective tool I have to stop spam getting through is mostly working, but the Spam Demiurge is feeling it’s way around, in blind-but-rapid evolutionary cycles, to find the gaps. I’m starting to think, once you get beyond the inconvenience, The Blind Spammaker is starting to create beauty*.

I got a spam tonight, for ‘gentlemanly enhancements’ (what else?) with the subject line:

“Subject: canon eigenspace polaris”

I think that there’s going to be a growing convergence between spam subject lines and the names of Culture Ships…