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Klara and the Sun and AFs. What are AFs, and why are they needed?

12 November 2021

WARNING: while there are no explicit spoilers here (for instance I don’t describe how Klara and the Sun ends) this article does give away some story points…

Klara, the titular character of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel Klara and the Sun, is an AF. She is an artificial friend. AFs are robots that are able to walk, talk, think, and perceive the world around them. In the near-future universe Ishiguro has crafted in his eighth novel, AFs, who appear to be similar in appearance to humans, are highly intelligent companions for teenagers. Despite their human-like qualities though, AFs are easily distinguishable from people. But Klara is said to differ from her AF contemporaries by way of her keen perception and curiosity.

As narrator of the story, Klara often describes in great detail what she sees, or hears, even if she doesn’t always fully comprehend what she has witnessed. Early in the story, as she sits in the display window of a store selling AFs, she watches two older people – a man and a woman – run into each other on the outside street. Their joy at meeting for what may be the first time in decades, is palpable, but Klara is confused by the obvious pain the two people also appear to experience.

While then we may be walking into a future where children will one day have keenly smart and perceptive android-like friends, the question remains as to why there is a need for AFs in the first place. In an introduction to the story’s plot on the Klara and the Sun Wikipedia page, we are told children are schooled at home by tutors through tablet devices (objects Klara refers to as oblongs). For this reason, families who can afford it, buy an AF for their housebound children, as opportunities to socialise with people the same age are said to be limited. But is that really the case?

Soon after coming into the service of a teenage girl called Josie, Klara meets many of her (human) friends at a gathering called an interaction party, hosted by Josie’s mother. The name alone suggests such gatherings are standard, but not necessarily. The dynamic among Josie’s guests implies most the teenagers know each other well. While interaction parties, by virtue of their name, sound like regular affairs, that the event takes place at Josie’s house is notable. For one thing, she lives in a remote region, restricting opportunities to interact with people her age.

But what of her friends? Do they also live in similar circumstances? It seems unlikely every last one does, meaning many would be able to see other teenagers living nearby, outside of schooling hours, thus negating the need (and cost) of an AF. It is also obvious Klara is something of a novelty to some of Josie’s friends. While they’re familiar with AFs, and the attributes of models like Klara, few have actually seen one before. This suggests AF ownership is an exception, most people don’t need them, as they probably live relatively close to others.

For instance, at one point Klara travels with Josie and her mother, Chrissie, to the city where they stay at the apartment of a family friend. While there are vaguely alluded to significant problems in the world Klara and Josie inhabit, they have not resulted in a mass exodus from large urban centres, nor their abandonment. People continue to live and work in cities as usual. Those residing in remote areas then do so by choice. And while we know Josie is ill, and may not get out as much as other teenagers, the need for a carer for her alone would not be reason enough to fill the world with AFs.

It is through this illness – the unfortunate side effect of what seems to be a common genetic modification procedure some teenagers go through – we come to realise Chrissie, Josie’s mother, has another possible purpose in mind for Klara. But again this idea is not the usual intended function of an AF. We’re still left wondering why there is an apparent wide need for AFs such as Klara. Might they then be there to undertake tasks or parental obligations that some parents are unable, or unwilling, to fulfil themselves? For example we know Klara acted as a chaperone at times.

When Rick visited the bedbound Josie in her room, Klara was told to always be present. While she sat with her back to Josie and Rick, Klara could still hear what they were saying and doing. When once asked to leave Josie’s room during one of Rick’s visits, Klara initially resisted, saying she’d been “instructed to ensure against hanky-panky.” But that directive had been issued by the ever-present, live-in, housekeeper, Melania. If she, and by extension Chrissie, was so concerned about “hanky-panky”, surely Melania could’ve been present during Rick’s relatively short visits.

So far there’s little an AF can do that another person – be it a friend, or family member – couldn’t. Josie certainly had plenty of both in her life. Perhaps then AFs were a vanity item. Something you had to have, so you stood apart from other people. A must have, though ultimately dispensable, gimmick. Or was an AF’s unswerving loyalty and devotion the reason they came into being? Like an artificial intelligence chatbot, “someone” who’s always there, who’s always ready to listen, and someone who is never offended no matter how badly they are treated?

What a world to live in…

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books, novels, technology

The Metaverse, one step closer to the Holodeck

1 November 2021

Last week Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the social network company he co-founded in 2004 will be known as Meta. Later, in his keynote presentation at the company Connect event, he unveiled a raft of technologies in development that have the potential to change the way we live and work.

The Star Trek geek in me could not help but make comparisons to the Holodeck, a room on the Enterprise that allowed the crew to realistically create, or re-create, almost any situation they could imagine. If you have a spare eighty or so minutes, check out Zuckerberg’s keynote. Tech analyst Ben Thompson interviewed the Facebook CEO shortly before the keynote, and if you have another forty-five minutes to spare, it’s a conversation well worth listening to. It’s a fascinating time for those of us with an oblong obsession.

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Mark Zuckerberg, metaverse, technology

Neil Mendoza’s amazing hamster powered hamster drawing machine

6 July 2016

The Hamster Powered Hamster Drawing Machine, created by Neil Mendoza, is exactly what it says it is. A drawing machine powered by what is effectively a running wheel for hamsters or mice.

I expect the hamsters or mice are pleased that their exertion brings about a little more than some exercise on their part.

Originally published Wednesday 6 July 2016, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

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art, design, legacy, technology

Artificial Intelligence, nothing to worry about, just yet anyway…

13 February 2015

Much is being said about artificial intelligence, or AI, and how AI powered entities stand ready to take over the world. Well, this might be a concern in the future.

But right now? Maybe not. That’s if Twitter page INTERESTING.JPG, “a smart computer looking at popular human images”, and the commentary it offers of the photos it sees, is anything to go by.

According to INTERESTING.JPG, this image is of a number of birds flying through the sky in front of a cliff. Mind you, INTERESTING.JPG can sometimes be on the mark, but not too often by the looks of it.

For now, at least, there’s not a whole lot to worry about…

Originally published Friday 13 February 2015.

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artificial intelligence, legacy, technology, trends

Analysing the music of Daft Punk with help from HTML5 and CSS3

17 May 2011

Sydney based Web Technologist Cameron Adams has put together “Anatomy Of A Mashup” a mashup/data visualisation of Daft Punk music with HTML5 and CSS3 (no Flash…), using the canvas and audio elements, plus transforms and transitions.

In order to explain the layering and interplay that goes into something like a Girl Talk album or The 139 Mix Tape I decided to take my own mashup of Daft Punk’s discography — Definitive Daft Punk — and reveal its entire structure: the cutting, layering, levels and equalisation of 23 different songs. By dividing up the sound data for each song and computing its appearance in realtime, the resulting visualisation gives you an understanding of the unique anatomy of this particular mashup.

While Adams recommends viewing the mashup with Chrome, I found it worked quite well with Firefox 4.

Originally published Tuesday 17 May 2011, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

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Daft Punk, legacy, music, technology

What might have happened if the internet was not invented?

1 March 2010

The other week, an article written in 1995 by Clifford Stoll who — in short — could see no future for the internet, resurfaced.

While events obviously took a different course, Stoll’s words started me wondering about a world without an internet, and what our lives in 2010 might be like in the absence of this “most trendy and oversold community”, as Stoll put it.

And faster than Marty McFly and Doc Brown can conjure up an alternative timeline, here we are, a day in my life, in an un-wired, web-less, 2010.

The day begins like this, as always…

I go down to my letter box. There are three letters, a bill, two magazines, and the daily newspaper. A prominently placed front-page article boasts of a circulation increase of 0.1%, according to the latest readership audit.

Over breakfast I continue scanning the paper. The music industry is on the war path. Again. They can’t seem to shut down the groups who are bootlegging albums, by burning them onto DVDs and then selling them for — quite literally — a song on the street.

Before settling into the day’s work I quickly reply to the letters I’ve received, this is a breeze since nowadays people mostly only write letters that are a paragraph or two long. And given they now only cost five cents to send, literally millions are exchanged daily in Australia.

Getting down to work, I need to do some research

I work from home as a freelance writer. I work for a number of what are called street magazines, which are independently produced publications.

Sometimes several people operate them, sometimes they are the work of one person, an editor, who also relies on contributions from freelance writers.

But more on street magazines later.

I work using a computerised pad like device about the size of an A4 sheet of paper. The top section has a screen, while the lower part has a keypad.

I can send output to either a printer, via fax (the Victorian age technology has really stood the test of time), or save it as a text file to a floppy disc, which I can courier to whomever I’m writing for.

I have two article deadlines in two days time, and will need to spend a couple of hours at the local library doing some research for them.

Some of those street magazines are quality rags

Some of the more popular publications do really well, and thanks to their numerous sponsors, turn out top-shelf editions each week.

People like Jason Kottke, Karen Cheng, John Gruber, and Duncan Macleod who runs a zine called The Inspiration Room, are considered some of the big names in street magazine publishing.

What makes one street magazine more popular than another? I have no idea really. Quality content for sure, but I think luck has a lot to do with it also. That hasn’t stopped a large number of hopefuls from publishing street magazines on how to publish street magazines though.

Clearly these sorts of publications don’t bother the established newspapers though, who are after all, boasting of increases in their readership.

Producing your own street magazine is also easy

Self publishing really caught on with the advent of photo-copy print machines, and because they are so cheap and easy to operate, they can be found in most corner stores, newsagents, and supermarkets.

The whole process is incredibly simple. You write content using your computer’s word-processor, and then, when finished, export the file to a floppy disc. Then it’s away to the nearest photo-copy print machine.

You simply insert the floppy disc in the yellow slot, select from a number of print-out (or publishing) options, insert some money, and a few minutes later you are a published author, proudly holding your paperback — which is usually A5 size by the way — in your hands.

Sites that offer photo-copy printing services also allow you to place your publications in vending shelves, for a small fee. Your readers can then come along and pick up your latest work.

Cafes, bars, cinemas, and even public transport services, also have distribution facilities, so publishers with good advertising revenue can afford to widely circulate their magazines.

Instead of Facebook and social networks

The way you meet people in this world is truly weird.

Case in point. I was just over at the supermarket when a girl smiled and waved at me. This puzzled me as she didn’t look familiar, so I asked if I knew her from somewhere. She looked perplexed. “I was just wondering if you wanted to be friends,” she said.

Maybe it was the way I was looking at her, as if she had stepped out of a flying saucer or some such.

“Well, what do you expect me to do? Send you a photo, a bio, and a list of my friends to you, or something? Come on, what sort of world do you think we live in? The Star Trek universe?”

We ended up shrugging at each other and went our separate ways.

Coffee meetings and face to face networking

Today is when the weekly writers coffee group meets. We get together every week to chat, network, and compare notes.

One guy there today was in a very excitable mood though, “you know, this is far more than people sitting in a cafe chatting, exchanging information and tips, it’s a… I don’t know, er, community network, a like, social network, you know?”

A social network? That sounds kind of cool. We all nodded meaningfully, and resumed our random chatter.

Instead of Twitter, micro-blogging, and text messaging

On returning home from the coffee group, there are a stack of “slips” in my letter box.

Slips are a micro revolution in what I call — for want of a better term — instant communication. Basically people can send 150 character messages to each other via the postal service.

In Australia for example you pay $100 a month and can send up to 500 slips. To send one you call the Post Office service centre, where a communications consultant transcribes your message, and then faxes it to the post office nearest to where the recipient lives.

Slips are delivered through out the day, though not so often in rural areas, by people who drive around in very distinct red and blue striped vans.

The big advantage of slips is in their brevity. People often can’t be bothered making a phone call or writing a letter, especially if they only want to tell their friends what they had for lunch or where they were at a certain time, so slips really took off.

Designed to be recycled, and printed on fax paper with a special ink that fades after a few days, they have also proved a boon for postal services worldwide as a result of their popularity.

Advertising is also carried on the back of slips, making the concept a veritable gold mine.

The future of the future is still televised

I watch as someone called Steve Jobs walks onto a stage at a trade show with a pad like device very similar to what I use. Except it has what Jobs’ refers to as a dongle attached to it.

The “dongle”, which is about the size of a packet of chewing gum, is a wireless transmitting device that allow computers to talk to each other, and also share information and files. It will change the very essence of our lives, Jobs says.

We’ll be able to buy music and movie files through the dongle somehow, publish street magazines “online”, and even meet people the same way. Yeah, right.

Quite a few people in the audience are clearly excited by what he is saying. But not me. Such a thing will never catch on.

I flick the TV off, and as I take delivery of the day’s last batch of slips, prepare to spend the rest of the evening reading through the growing pile of street magazines that I subscribe to.

An “online” world?

I couldn’t possibly imagine living in such a place. If you disagree though, please send me a slip or letter. Good night.

Originally published Monday 1 March 2010, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

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Book launch: Futuretainment by Mike Walsh, Sydney, 1 December 2009

2 December 2009

Last night Mike Walsh launched his new book Futuretainment – which looks at the future of media and marketing – at the Hotel CBD in Sydney. He spoke with technology journalist Brad Howarth, and offered a few of his insights into advertising and marketing, particularly in Asia, together with a couple of trend predictions for 2010.

• People born after 1994 are digital “naturals”. They have never lived in a world without web browsers.
• “Naturals” have never known a time when they cannot access decent content somewhere online.
• Content producers and creators (copy-righters) such as musicians are effectively marketers.
• Musicians, for example, encourage “content theft”… they don\’t make revenue from recorded music, that comes from sales of merchandise, live performances, etc.
• Social networks drive TV programming. People increasingly watch what is forwarded to them (videos, links to videos).
• Viewers are deciding what they will watch, not the TV networks.
• How will content producers make money? Become a celebrity… cue Ashton Kutcher and his declaration to become “the next new-media mogul“.
• Japan excels at producing content for mobile phones.
• The Chinese know how to make money with social networks. QQ, a Chinese variation of Facebook, made US$1 billion last year.
• In Korea people watch more TV shows on mobile phones than a television.
• Digital consumers in Asia are generally very tech savvy, have access to unlimited bandwidth, and have little regard for copyright.
• Ninety per cent of Chinese internet users have broadband, which is considerably faster than that available in Australia.
• Augmented reality will put consumers in control by way of real time product and service reviews and critiques.

Originally published Wednesday 2 December 2009, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

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Australia, books, legacy, Mike Walsh, technology, trends

Babies’ names are not carried far and wide by the internet

3 July 2009

Interesting premise, the rise of the internet, and even globalisation, has not quite created the global village that many people predicted it would.

At least this is the opinion of two researchers at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, after studying names given to babies since 1995. They found naming trends tended to remain local rather global, despite the rise of email and the ability to spread ideas, and share information, quickly online.

The two researchers’ study of the spread of new names was prompted by their discovery that the relationship between the number of private e-mails sent in America and the distance between sender and recipient falls off far more steeply than they expected. People are overwhelmingly e-mailing others in the same city, rather than those far away.

Originally published Friday 3 July 2009.

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Rebekah Horne of MySpace Australia, talks to Mike Walsh at Fourth Estate Domain

17 June 2009

Rebekah Horne is the Australian head of MySpace, and Vice President of Fox Interactive Media. She also oversees the IGN, Rotten Tomatoes, and Ask Men websites.

Last night she spoke to Mike Walsh as part of the Fourth Estate Domain On the Couch interview series, in Sydney. Here’s some of what we heard.

• Yes, Horne has a MySpace profile, and refers to social networking rival, Facebook, as “the other site”, or “F Book”…
• 78 per cent of the MySpace audience in Australia is 18 or over.
• MySpace memberships grew six per cent in March compared with 3.6 per cent growth for Facebook.
• There are some 40,000 Australian bands on MySpace, both signed and unsigned acts.
• MySpace widget, or application, developers have been guaranteed recompense for their work, being the revenue generated from ads associated with their widget.
• Australia is a great market for creative content producers, but producing a video series for Web TV, such as quarterlife, is still expensive, and it can cost in the order of $200,000 to produce a series of three to five minute “webisodes”.
• The recently launched MySpace TV is interested in hearing from creative content producers who have ideas.
• MySpace Mobile is “going gangbusters” receiving two million page impressions out of a total of one billion impressions for mobile.
• PlayStation Portable is the most popular device used to access MySpace Mobile.

Originally published Wednesday 17 June 2009, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

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legacy, Mike Walsh, Rebekah Horne, social networks, technology

So, this is why there are so many spammers

7 October 2008

While email systems make a breeze of distributing spam messages en masse, the medium has another not so apparent benefit, it makes being deceptive or untruthful far easier. Something, seemingly, not so simple to accomplish in face-to-face, or even in handwritten, communications.

Experts have long known that it is easier to lie in writing than in real life, where deception is made more difficult by physical prompts such as eye contact. But psychological tests conducted by business professors at Rutgers, Lehigh and DePaul universities in the US found people are significantly more likely to lie in emails than in handwritten documents.

I mean, could you look someone in the eye and tell them “your pills could augment their extension”, for example? No: better you send them an email.

Originally published Tuesday 7 October 2008, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

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legacy, psychology, technology