Andy B J Low
Raconteur, paramour, pragmatist, programmer and poet.
Poems for the October 2021 meeting of the Real Time Club.
These are the notes for the October 2021 meeting of the Real Time Club.
Some, many, none of this may have been used at the meeting.
Some may well have been used and edited on the fly.
Empowered coexistence
Humans and
CoBots - Collaborative RoBots
SoftBots - Software helpers.
A program that acts on behalf of a user or another program.
SoftBot recursion, infinite deferment.
Checking e-mails for pronouns and religious observance.
It looks like you're about to resign, shall I slag off your boss?
(Inserts standard boilerplate slagging off your boss)
ChatBot:
Lead the caller through a maze,
every turn the hope of resolution faintly burns.
Infinite unnumbered, unremembered turns.
Call timeout, retry, start again
queue and wait for another turn.
Suggested search terms,
filtered, carefully ordered results returned
gently guide the user away from their desired path.
Comrade Botski, light millions of internet fires, distract the unwashed
while I quietly change the meninges of words
derail the legislature, so that when they return
the noun that defined them means no more than just one of the herd.
no name no identity no voice to be heard
simply abused, undefined and unheard.
The use if Improv as a programming tool.
The Code walkthrough.
Role play the program and script.
I trialed an early softbot once.
A Belguian policeman and I did a walk through of a confession.
The tale of Brussels Eurostar Station:
In a room beneath Brussels Eurostar Station
The train was late, four hours of extra free first class wine rations.
In my haste to jump barriers to catch the last train form the station
I engaged in a little diplomatic altercation
My computer* made a bit of a dent in the head of a policeman.
There followed a short walk and a comedy interrogation.
The policeman assisted by dictating my confession.
But, because of a simple design omission,
inadequate feedback and a lack of English comprehension,
he never noticed that what I had written
was the script of an old BBC radio transmission.
Wallace Greenslade and Bloodnok on an earlier European mission.**
* An IBM P75, quite a heavy, well made portable PC. Solid cast aluminum chassis.
** "The tales of men's shirts." As I recall.
Two weeks later on my way home the very same policeman stamped my passport.
We exchanged pleasantries and the common wish to never see each other again.
Software assisted statement dictation machine:
Her statement was clear
as she spoke clearly into the softbot dictation machine
"the rapist was a man in a wig and a dress" she said.
the police never found the suspect, a woman
the investigation, put to bed.