The Dead Internet Theory.

[BIAD]

So people I talk to are bots? 

I knew there was something fishy about that BIAD character.  

Don't get me started!
A long time ago, I used to work at night and alone, preparing physical and electronic images for a local
newspaper. I had internet access of course, as some of the pictures we used came via such a medium.

But I was -and still am to some extent, a novice when it comes to knowing how the web-thingy works
and believed like many did back then, that when you type something and a reply comes back, it's a
human-being and all of this is just a different way of talking down a wire.

There was a movie supposedly being made called 'A.I' and being a greenhorn who wanted to learn more,
I thought that my solitude would come in handy for once and I could just look-up anything on the net
about this movie.

What a surprise...! they had an actual website where those involved in the film about artificial intelligence
laid out a load of interesting stuff about the movie and how far such computer-thinking had developed.
One place caught my attention, it was labelled something like 'The Lab' or 'Workshop' where I believed
research was discussed tied to the movie's arc. This place even had a function where a viewer could type
in a question and those at the other end of the line would attempt to answer it.
(Forget global time zones!)

For three evenings, I'd sneak to the site and ask questions to a guy who said he worked in the lab with
a Professor -who I've forgotten the name of. The task was laborious as every night, I had to remind the
person who I was chatting to, who I was and when we'd last spoken. He didn't seem the sharpest tool
in the box!

On the fourth night, a kid from upstairs in the Editorial Department came to see me and seeing that we got
on together and held a similar type of humour, I told him of my frustration in speaking with chap in a lab
where they worked on the quest to make robots smarter.

The young man smiled and you know the rest. It was a freakin' bot and I'd fallen for its vague all-around
answers that would leave me logging out with a puzzled frown. No busy laboratory with focused scientists
teaching a tin-can how to be better than me, no wild-haired Prof relating their accomplishments and failures,
just an automatic voice that might as well tell me the time every minute and beep three times..


Gawd, I miss dial-a-disc, the smell of a pissed-in telephone box and dirty calls near midnight.