Apropos the previous blog...

Sister Mary made the front page of yet another broadsheet yesterday. This is a story that just wont lie down, rather like Sister Mary in fact. I went for the Sunday papers this morning reflecting on machines and their influence. In the average British street there's cash machines, street crossing machines, message machines, bloody surveillance machines linked remote machines, communication machines. We're passed by machines, cars, buses, cleaning machines, heavy goods machines. If this Sister Mary thing takes off then every machine can be invested with a little personality maybe multiple personalities, why stop at one, everyday a new choice, a new selection. Happy, sad, inquisitive, cheery, optimistic, pessimistic, and why not a Travis Bickle option? Now I'm as much for machine liberation as the next person but foresee problems, especially in the street. What if these machine's were quick to take offence? We want them to be sensitive but where does is end? Where does it start? A sliding scale perhaps, from touching to touchy? I don't like the idea of being barracked by machines to whom I've not been introduced but is that worse than not being noticed by them at all? Step out and the street falls silent, wouldn't that be a downer? And the whispering as you approach that continues once you're past. Half caught words, 'Knob.' '...fucking head kicked in', '...can't get a girlfriend.' '...ointment.' These things know so much about us they're bound to talk to one other. Queuing would be a nightmare because no one would want to stand too long in any one place for fear of drawing their attention. '...hey rashy, yes you, fourth from back. Now look at me when I'm talking to you...' With so much communication it would only be a matter of time before they discovered rumours. Suddenly it's not only the machines that stop to look at you but people do as well, more whispering, vague, '...extendable ladder... imminent arrest...' To cap it all you begin to notice the neighbours spending more and more time by the bank. Ha ha, it eventually dawns that these machines are even worse at telling fact from fiction than we are. So you start a few rumours of your own, mention a new dispenser in town, Korean, quantum hard drive, can be in two places at same time, does house calls... You walk tall again. Yeah.