I was thinking about how to externalize so much of the stuff. There is always a lot we can't externalize. Unless I actually had someone else who would be my trusted system. Now, I don't want to hire someone. I want a droid. You know what I mean? A trusted system that was electronic and was saving files etc etc but had personality. A seemless kind of interaction like that. Something I didn't have to train so much. Something that tried to learn my ways.

An "Alfred."

I've tried to assign some personality to my trusted system, but I'm not fooling anyone: it's just my personality that I'm codifying. I want something that's a little more independent. Let's take the tamaguchi (sp?) and virtual roleplaying game technology and do something more useful with it. Not just entertainment. A virtual butler who kept track--and I mean KEPT TRACK--of your information. Would volunteer useful information. You could talk to him in a general way "Hey, I need to get milk at the store," and he'd file it away for you, remind you when you needed to go to the store. He'd keep track of addresses. He'd sort through your email. Let you know as things came up: "Several emails came for you in the last hour, and I know you asked not to be bothered, but one is from your girlfriend, so I thought I should tell you anyway." That is not beyond the technology of gaming software today, by *any* means. Why don't we have it? I'd buy it. I'd be willing to spend a lot of money on that. There are highly sophisiticated NPCs in computer games. What I'm talking about is trivial.

Who'd want one of these? Who's interested in seeing if it can be done? Anyone have any resources out there to exploit? I have a few ideas...