Network Features (text | un: finch)

[ornithologist]

Please complete the below survey regarding possible enhancements to our communication devices and network system. I will be working with Aurora to make these upgrades.

I may or may not respond to comments. Thank you.

Edit: Additional features being considered based on feedback that were not in the poll include: (1) ease of use features for those less familiar with technology, (2) Wikipedia or an equivalent, (3) banning specific users from personal posts or communications.

Edit 2: Adding (4) storage and sharing for image, audio and video files, primarily for entertainment or educational purposes and (5) expansion of the library to include digital lending of those materials.

Poll #32315

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 20

View Respondents

Which additional features would you utilize?

View Answers

Basic system functions such as timer, alarm, and calculator
8 (40.0%)

Real-time synchronous audio communication (like a phone rather than discrete message delivery)
13 (65.0%)

One-to-one private communications (standard security)
15 (75.0%)

Privacy settings allowing group selection for communications
12 (60.0%)

Advanced secure encrypted channels outside of Aurora's access
15 (75.0%)

Social media
6 (30.0%)

Something else not listed:

View Answers

Comments

[levelshift]

There's still nothing stopping people from lying about their age or whatever.

So you're making this for the community at large? That's altruistic.

[ornithologist]

Just as there isn't otherwise.

I find myself without many other job prospects.

[levelshift]

You think people'll be honest if you make a platform?

So I was right before. You're bored.

[ornithologist]

Hardly, but Aurora did ask me to gather information about requested features, and social media would normally be commonly utilized.

I miss the internet.

[levelshift]

She did? Why?

Yeah, it'd be nice if we could hook up to some universe's internet. Not sure the barrier would allow it, though. Not to mention there's the whole question of how inter-universal data transmission would work.

[ornithologist]

I'm not certain, but I imagine it's out of interest in learning how to better meet our needs. Given the popularity of the response about having secure communication channels outside of her (or Echo's) oversight, perhaps she'll allow me to work with her on something I can verify is truly private.

I don't see why not. Everything else around here is out of a science fiction or fantasy novel, why do we need to be hampered by inter-universal data transmission? We should at least have Wikipedia.

Perhaps I'll add that and banning capabilities to my list.

[levelshift]

That makes sense, I guess. Eos had a similar mandate of looking out for her participants' wellbeing.

So you can ban that asshole priest?

[Those messages are public, Harold!!]

[ornithologist]

Perhaps Aurora, Eos, and their other "siblings" are different iterations or attempts at the same thing.

Don't feed the trolls, Accelerator.

[levelshift]

It's possible. It'd explain why they use the term sisters to refer to each other.

[It's like the Sisters back home! Cool cool cool.]

Funny that trolls still exist when the internet doesn't.

[ornithologist]

An autonomous sentient intelligence is not the sort of thing one makes successfully on the first try. Aurora's capability to empathize suggests she would be a later iteration.

[ Don't ask him how he knows! Anyway, Harold knows Aurora could be faking it, too, as he'd said to Vincent -- but he has to accept some things as true or he'll be in decision paralysis forever. He's just remaining open to revising those assumptions. ]

Some things are eternal. I think there was graffiti found from Roman times equivalent to the typical bathroom stall scribble.

[levelshift]

[Hey Harold, this is the kind of subject he could discuss at home without batting an eye, because he comes from the most scientifically advanced city in the world that's populated by super geniuses. It's one thing to talk about the nature of AI in Academy City. It's something else to talk about it in a place where there are still people who don't understand what a phone is.

All that to say Accelerator is raising an eyebrow.]

She's the younger sister. Isn't the development of empathic behaviour connected to evolutionary processes that happen over time? Maybe Echo got really into crossing evolutionary programming with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index.

Seriously? What'd it say? 'Spartacus was here, Crassus is a shithead'?

[ornithologist]

You could refer to a later iteration as younger, so that fits my theory.

[ He actually types and deletes about four different responses that he decides are too revealing, and is left irritated with himself but still deeply interested in the conversation. ]

I don't see why we should assume Echo took any influence from biological or evolutionary processes at all. It's not the most expedient way to program something, that's for certain. Evolution takes millions of years to be effective in selection.

Let's say it was a depiction of a male body part.

[levelshift]

[Rude Harold, not taking the bait. Accelerator isn't sure what that means, if Harold is just being his weird private self or if all that went over his head.

... Either way, he doesn't really want to explain evolutionary programming.]

It wouldn't be hard to speed up the process up using parallel programming of simulations.

People never change.

[ornithologist]

[ So hard to tell with Harold! But in this case he has no idea what evolutionary programming is. ]

I agree, but it being a possibility isn't enough to persuade me that's what happened.

I really don't think they do, as a whole.

[levelshift]

I could always ask Aurora. She might know what kind of processes Echo used.

[ornithologist]

Provided we could trust her answers. Though I'm wondering, given the popularity of the option, if she might allow me to verify to my satisfaction a secure method of communication outside of her access.

That would change my sentiments a bit.

[levelshift]

Yeah? How were you thinking of testing it?

[ornithologist]

Technologically? I couldn't say until I see it for myself. Efficacy wise? None of our efforts for secure communication could possibly be foolproof, so we'll have to accept some degree of uncertainty.

Testing would at least give me some peace of mind...

[levelshift]

Accepting some uncertainty is better than not even trying.

If you need help with anything, I've got nothing better to do.

[ornithologist]

Precisely how I feel.

Thank you, I may take you up on that.