“Well, Ann”, her husband asked, “are you going to turn it on?”
Ann Kelly looked down at the small device in her pocket. It was black, about the size and shape of a cellphone. Assuming it’s shiny black surface was the top, it’s back and sizes were slightly soft and slightly rough. The top must must be a touch screen. There were no knobs, buttons or switches, nothing to turn it on.
The device seemed cold and dead, not like the active one Beth had shown her at the school that summer. Ann didn’t know what to do with it. She envisioned Beth back in Vancouver, smiling a knowing smile. Actually Beth and Esmeralda were wandering around Berkeley, California in a daze, wondering why they were there.
There was no written material anywhere in the box that contained the rest of the devices. Ann would have to figure it out for herself. “Little witch”, she muttered under her breath. Feeling like a character in a silly TV show, Ann said “Computer On.” Nothing.
Maybe it was on already. Maybe they were all on. No, that seemed unlikely. Battery power would be draining away. She tapped the touch screen in various ways, turned the unit over and over.
I dunno, Mitchie, any ideas? Her husband picked up another one of the units and unwrapped it. He looked it over, waved it around, touched it to Ann’s. “Damn kid”, he muttered. Formerly very religious, Ann and Mitch had learned to say ‘Damn’, which at first was a challenge. Even now it was their strongest oath.
Hit by a flash of insight, Ann turned the thing sideways and wrote ‘ON’ with her finger. The screen lit up for a moment and displayed, “NO!” before blinking off again.
Ann almost swore an even mightier oath, catching herself just in time.
This time she added the exclamation mark: “ON!”
The screen lit up again, asking, “What?” Ann and Mitch laughed at each other. This must have been Beth playing with them.
On the other machine, Mitch wrote the command as Ann had, also being asked what he wanted. The couple glanced at each other, then as Ann wrote “Help” on the screen, forgetting to add an exclamation mark.
That did not seem to matter. The screen lit up with a menu:
“Give up”, “Setup”, “Contact Someone”, “Other”, “More Help.”
Damn kid. Enough tricks, and she wasn’t going to give up yet. Ann thought she could get through setup by herself, so she pressed the screen there.
“Lay identification card face down on this screen, or press ‘Help’” Ann went and fetched her driver’s license. She glimpsed a bit of light leaking from the edges of her card as it was scanned. Scanner and touch screen, both. How did that work?”
While Mitch followed her example, Ann took back her card. Now the surface looked exactly like a mirror. The way she was holding it, it reflected mostly the ceiling of the room, little of her face. After a moment, the mirror surface disappeared, being replaced by a message, “Move the unit until a good reflection of your face is shown.”
Ann glanced at Mitch, who had reached the same point. Each tilted the screen around, looking in the small mirrors. Soon those mirrors disappeared and a menu of options appeared. Now Ann thought it was time to use “Contact Someone”. When she did, Ann saw a menu:
“Suggest”, “Usual Suspects”, “Name”, and “Number”.
Ann hit “Suggest”. A menu of choices came up:
Sally Aston”, “Drake Phillips”, “Sarah Rivers”, “Beth Green”.
Ann picked “Beth Green”.
“She’s Busy: ‘Leave Message’, ‘Call Closest Available Contact’, ‘Emergency’.”
“Tempted to interrupt the girl, she instead clicked “Call Closest Available Contact”.
Closest must not mean geographically. From Vancouver a familiar voice came from the device. “Oh, hi, Ann. It’s Sarah. Don’t swear at her. She’s not a bad kid, really.”
“Is it actually you, Sarah, or is this a prerecorded joke.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her. Actually I think Essie thought of the whole ‘Tease Ann” idea. Beth is a sweet kid, Esmeralda is a mildly wicked sweet kid.”
“Is it actually you, Sarah, or is this a prerecorded joke”, Ann asked again.
Sarah was able to convince Ann that the joke was over now, then gave her a few clues about using the device without going through all those silly menus.
“Actually, just keep pressing ‘More Help’ over and over again. Set it on audio first, I think. You can get right to it by writing ‘AH!’, ‘Aye, Eitch, Exclamation Mark’, on the screen to turn the device on, then saying ‘More’ or pressing ‘More Help’ over and over again. You can use is as a phone by writing ‘AP!’, ‘Aye, Pea, Exclamation Mark’ on the screen to turn it on. There are simpler ways, too, single symbols that the machine can show you.
“Now you tell me. I think I should have called your daughter and yelled at her.”
“Not a good time. She knew she would be going to university early, but didn’t expect to be plunked down in Berkeley, already enrolled in advanced courses there, while still only ‘almost 15′. Esmeralda is with her, of course, though she is even younger.”
“You could have sent them to Columbia, Sarah, couldn’t you? We’d have liked them nearby.”
“Sorry. Not the right mix of courses. That may have just been and excuse, though. Ken didn’t want them out of our timezone.”
“She’s carrying one of these things?”
“Always. And that will be important to you. You’ll see.”
After talking to Sarah, Ann called her friends, then drove in to the city with the box, minus a few units she had kept for friends in Princeton. She gave one to Sally and one to Drake. Now the original Tech Fantasies Trio were each equipped with something, but unsure just what it was.
A new item on the main menu was now “Suggest” — the main menu, not the contact menu. Pressed, it gave each of them a different suggestion. Ann was given the options of either distributing units to friends outside of the school, or working on an ordinary computer instead. Sally was told to distribute units within the school or discuss them with selected friends. Drake was also given the option of working with an ordinary computer, on his own, with Ann, or with another selected friend.
Ann and Drake sat down together at a desktop computer in his office. They felt comfortable being together as friends, though both were now married to other people, and still conscious of the time they had spent together as lovers.
As soon as they sat down at the desktop computer it turned itself on and greeted them both by name. Drake thought it must have been in a low-power standby mode. He wasn’t sure how it had gotten from that to full-on mode and knew who they were, but could make some educated guesses.
Working with the desktop machine, following a series of suggestions which led into an ever deeper dialogue, Ann realized that it must be using the screen mounted webcam to see who was typing at each moment.
While Ann and Drake were busy, Sally was contemplating options suggested by the machine for distributing its fellows within the school. A completely random distribution was one highly recommended option. Giving machines to each teacher then randomly to students, until there were no more left to distribute was another option.
Sally was not happy with either suggestion. Without too much trouble she managed to turn most of the screen into a keyboard, so she could type in questions. “Can these units be shared?”, was one question.
“Yes. For details, go to the nearest printer.”
Sally approached the printer, which turned itself on and printed a sheet of explanation. Among other things, she was told that these prototypes were extremely expensive and there was more danger of loss or damage if shared.
To share the machines people would have to give explicit access to some information about the people they were linked to and some incompatible people who should not be allowed to “borrow” a unit from its set of regular users.
Though she had received a suggestion to distribute the machines within the school, Sally made an executive decision and gave one to her former student, John Calder, now at Columbia, explaining that Grace, Clarity and perhaps a few other people could set themselves up as users, if he chose to let them. Almost immediately John called his lovely little wife, Grace, into the room and they began playing with their new toy. Sally let herself out.
It soon became apparent that the machines learned from what their users did. Not truly artificial intelligences, they did learn in some way, probably through the neural networks Beth had mentioned.
When doing anything on a desktop or laptop computer the small units were clearly active in some way. If the student admitted to being completely unable to answer the question, a social suggestion was made, not a hint. Usually these suggestions were either to take a break or answer the other questions first, then get in contact with someone else who might be having difficulty with the same question.
When students accepted or rejected suggestions, that seemed to be noted, as the kinds of suggestions eventually changed.
Sometimes the devices suggested cultural things, art, music, movies, books. Some of these involved live music or shared events, such as watching a movie, in a theatre in at home. When that happened, people who might want to share the event were sometimes listed.
Though attractive in many ways, it did seem possible that they could be a nuisance. That was rare, since they learned when their owners were willing to be disturbed, and how.
Contacted by phone, Beth made it clear that there would be more units eventually, but they were in fact terribly expensive, and still in beta-testing. She didn’t want her family corporation to be selling them, not even to rich parents. Especially not to rich parents, because she didn’t want the school community to be distorted by differences of household income.
Sally agreed. Her school by itself was the right place to test the inventions, which surely owed their creation to that brilliant child. The larger community should not be directly involved, though students might share with their families. Their parents should not be able to buy ones for themselves, not yet.
There were in fact more than one hundred of the devices operational, as Ann guessed. Beth had given some to friends. Her family had some. Don and Helen at Project Match had some. Properly asked, a unit could give out some information about their distribution, though not in detail.
Properly asked, the units could give out quite a lot of information, but mostly it was social information. They could function as cellphones, could function as small computers, but were primarily social hardware, devices to bring people together and help them interact. They were really intended for one thing: to make suggestions. Social, cultural, and even employment suggestions, for those who chose to work at part-time jobs, for the money or for the experience.
Young Samsa Risan was a scholarship student from a poor Southeast Asian family. Selected from the pool of Tech Fantasies users after accessing the service from a public library computer, she had been sent to study at Social Tech High at no cost to her family. She was one of those who needed a part time job.
Samsa was 15, in Grade 10. Her social connections were to a teacher and a best friend, another girl. It was her friend who had been given the social tech hardware device, usually called called an Soteitch or just Seitch. Samsa was allowed to use it, and often did. As she used it, the device learned more about her, things she had not told the Tech Fantasies system when she had used it.
Without her ever asking for it, one day Samsa got the suggestion that she apply for a job working weekends in a bookstore near the school. Her teacher explained how this could happen, then her thoroughly compatible friend went with the shy girl to help her get the job. It was not long before working in the bookstore helped her get over her shyness. It helped her in other ways as well, learning ever more about her from her activities. It was not long before the girl and her family became fully integrated into the full Social Tech High community, which would have many consequences.