h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Far out in the unchartered backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy, an ape descendant sat down at his type writer and wrote a story about a book.

The book in the book was the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. If you're in any way connected with the literary or digital professions, I implore you to read it again. If you've not read it yet, you really must.

The book has turned out to be very prophetical, and with the radio series The Hitchhikers Guide to the Future, pretty much everything technologically that we've been seeing over the last few years, and are currently being touted as the next big thing, has been forecast by this ape man.

I was pointed to this article over Twitter: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/01/the-book-of-the-future-sliced-and-diced.html and couldn't help but once again think the above thoughts. People are now coming up with the ideas that Douglas Adams wrote about all those years ago, technology has caught up with imagination and we have these great things.

But what I'm wondering now, is what else was written about in those books and what else was talked about in the radio series that we can now start doing? Where else has technology caught up?

Clearly the hand-held electronic book is exactly as he envisaged, although it's probably more like a tablet than a Kindle.

And we're discussing people personalities (i.e. the overfamiliarisation of technology) in Askh2g2 right now.

We're getting better at universal translation (babel fish)

We still haven't mastered space travel, though, and we may never do. Hell, we don't even know if there are any Vogons, Golgafrinchams or Magratheans out there to visit.

bureaucracy, it is still possible should you be willing to try, to actually get things done - we should eliminate this possibility, we need more automated phone lines with nonsensical options all of which go to further more annoying levels then when you finally think your about to get through send you back to the beginning all the while recording the call so they can be even helpful next time

You wanna be careful Doc, I've just spec'd to build an automated phone system

On the over-familiarity side of things, d'you reckon I should make Eddie (the Guide Mark 2) friendly / familiar?

that should be even less helpful next time... stupid laptop...


Eddie should say "welcome puny human" but we might loose traffic that way

Oh, I don't know we might get more

Only in an ironic postmodern way.

true, an antidote to too much friendliness

Ooh, here's an idea...

It's possible to monitor the words that people are typing into the Guide, not to track them or anything weird, but to monitor the Happiness of what people are typing. If people are typing mostly "happy" words, the site is happy, if they're typing mostly sad words, the site is site.

So, given that, it's possible to determine an overall "mood" of Eddie, and therefore it's possible to have this mood come through in the tone, words, and even the assistance that Eddie gives. If the site's mood is generally nice and happy, then the error pages could be very helpful, suggestive and toned nicely. If the overall mood is angry or sulky, then it's possibly to make the help pages say things like "Find it out yourself"

In short, giving Eddie the personality of the community. A *genuine* people personality.

Of course, it'd probably be a better idea to do the opposite to try and automatically soothe people, but hey that's not as much fun

As a people manager, I aim to keep a constant distance from my team. If they are euphoric, I take a step back. If they are down, I approach. Maybe Eddie would gain respect if he did too?

I keep forgetting you're a people manager away from h2g2

But yes, I think so too.

I like the idea of giving Eddie a GPP. It might pull more people into the site.

How hard would it be to have a 'talk to Eddie' feature with Cleverbot technology? Would it be too huge?

Sort of a combination FAQ/direction to Help Pages and the Guide/general futzing around?

As long as you can switch iy off (or gag it, at least). Nobody needs a Clippy.

I've got it! "Talk to 2legs" feature. You type a question and get back a random 2legs posting in reply.

The Turing test is conquered.

Yes. An entirely new category would have to be added:

Sentient/not sentient/2legs.

Yes!

"[Random Entry] [Random Edited Entry] [2legs' 'Words of Wisdom'] "

Woah. Way too many ' characters in that line above. *shudder*

Well, the guys who wrote the chat stuff for Starship Titanic are still in touch, so it might be possible to have a new version of SpookiTalk

But Pastey, if you put in your happiness finder, you'd have a problem - given the "typical" hootoer (if such a thing exists) we'd then start deliberatly trying to throw the system off...though this might then have the effect of making people happier

Is it even possible to have too many apostrophies? Would too few apostropies be, in fact, ultimately, that of which itself may be of a higher level of detrimental affect, apon the otherwise apostrophy-ridden void of the universe?
I mean, taken into account the size of the universe, which is like just so amazingly big (as someone may have once apon a time already commented on), then, seeing as how the universe is just so mind-bobingly massive, to a point of near, or as close as makes no difference, total vastness, then, given the limited number, or finite number of apostrophies, thusly far used, and to eventually be used, over the whole bundle of all percievible time, then, by the nature of the vastness of the universe, the finite number of apostrophies must, be as mind bobingly small, as the universe is mind bobbingly massive, making it as insignificently small, as the chance of finding a decent beer in a GreenKing pub.
Unless... unless the dog was right, in which case, we really should be paying a lot more atteniton to the apostrophies, and less attention to the zircon encrusted tweezers. Or not.

404 page not found

"Here I am, brain the size of a plannet and you expect me to sort out your mistyped URLs"

I like the idea of making it a user setting, so you can choose to have a helpful system, a default system, or a realistic genuine people personality system