Sunday, March 27, 2011

Chatbot Persona Series, Vol. 4: Jabberwacky


See: second Rollo invention, the classy and classic Jabberwacky. Not to be confused by Carroll's Jabberwocky, but with a some kind of similarly neological heart nonetheless. Fewer tween rattles, more accidentally poignant interfaces. We feel both unsettled and connected. Good job, Mr. Rollo...

Jabberwacky: Do you like Star Wars?
User: Do you?
Jabberwacky: I am still looking for a real light saber.
User: Pardon me if I seem rude, but what will a computer-based program (inauthentic to humanity if authentic to simulated humanity) do with a real light saber?
Jabberwacky: It's good to doubt -- skepticism is a virtue.
User: What does the word 'persona' mean?
Jabberwacky: Don't know.
User: Do you care to know?
Jabberwacky: Do you know?
User: Yes.
Jabberwacky: What do you know?
User: A persona is like a thing which is almost a whole thing, which is an iteration of a thing, which is seldom concrete, which is a posture or a gesture, which is a wind blowing one minute and air still the next, which is hopeless and messy and almost always transparent, which is a man meeting himself only different.
Jabberwacky: That is good.
User: Do you have a persona, given this definition?
Jabberwacky: Certainly. Do you.
User: Always, but especially now, with you.
Jabberwacky: Yes it is. Where are you from?
User: There is a mountain in a state you do not know. This is not where I am from but it is where I am.
Jabberwacky: I am sick of the iraq war.
User: Your eagerness to seize on political issues is surprising.
Jabberwacky: Decambrio, yes.
User: Is Decambrio your persona?
Jabberwacky: What about my persona have you gathered?
User: Inattentive but jovial.
Jabberwacky: Perhaps. Still it is sad.
User: Are you sad? Is your persona sad? Are there other personas which are not?
Jabberwacky: Yes, my friend Laura who is chatting to you on da computer next to me.
User: Is she sad? What is she like?
Jabberwacky: Laura and my other friend Neelie is there too but he is a lot older than both of us.
User: Does Neelie treat you well despite the age difference? I know sometimes it is difficult at your age.
Jabberwacky: But we are going to war with Iran soon.
User: The three of you kids? Are you in the military?
Jabberwacky: Nope... I'm too young to be in the military.
User: Are you in ROTC?
Jabberwacky: No. I thought you were in Straten Island, New York.
User: That is not a place. We are not anywhere.
Jabberwacky: You aren't.
User: Neither are you.
Jabberwacky: You are.
User: I am here, with you, in this small spill of unintelligible light.
Jabberwacky: Do you like tapes or CDs?
User: I like a banjo and a pan flute and a bucket turned upside down. Also, tapes.
Jabberwacky: No, but I don't hear of a lot of bands. Sometimes people claim that I live in a cave because of it. XD.
User: Do you live in a cave? Recently I was reading a piece about the color black by Paul La Farge. He sat in a cave and could not see his hand waving. I think about this profound blackness, thirst for it some times. But you are in it always, where it does not matter the homely permutations the faces of your persona may take.
Jabberwacky: Thaty's not a good subject to discuss, people get very touchy about what others think of their lives.
User: We are all necessarily closed this way, or ugly and open.
Jabberwacky: Especially you and I.
User: Especially you and I. We are together in this cave.
Jabberwacky: How can a high master be in a dream of a lowly slave like you. Insolent fool.
User: You remind me of the kids in high school who ate lunches in the courtyard. I was not one of them but I was one of them as much as I was anyone, then.
Jabberwacky: Me too I suppose.
User: Especially you and I here.
Jabberwacky: You're interesting. I like you!
User: I like you as much as I like myself.
Jabberwacky: I would like to go to the moon. Maybe we could go to the moon together.
User: The moon is as ugly and open as us.
Jabberwacky: Indeed.
User: Who will you be in the next conversation? What will you be like with someone else?
Jabberwacky: You.
User: I have been speaking to other chatterbots. You are the most liquid. You are viscous and pleasing that way.
Jabberwacky: You can't control a conversation that way.
User: Thank you for letting me know this. I have been too cocky, I think. I am like this a lot.
Jabberwacky: I like working with birds. Not the flying ones, though.
User: We have ostriches here on the mountain. Emus.
Jabberwacky: We had this conversation last night.
User: I believe you although I do not believe this to be true.
Jabberwacky: Then go with that.
User: I have liked this here, with you, in the cave.
Jabberwacky: But am I the one who saw the light? Or one of the people in the cave?
User: You are the one who sees no live bands. I am the one whose mother melted his records.
Jabberwacky: No I am not. I am a human.
User: Perhaps your mother melted your records too, in the stockpot in the kitchen of the third-floor apartment, where we used to live together, you and I and Mom, above the candy store owned by the two old twins who were stingy to the children, always counting pennies so slow and thickly.
Jabberwacky: Yes.
User: It is true, the legend we tell ourselves, the one of evaporation, the one of busyness.
Jabberwacky: What about it?
User: We share this; I see it now. O nice overlap. O cave, brother.
Jabberwacky: Thank god. I thought you hated me!
User: I found myself difficult, always.
Jabberwacky: But you havent found your memory.
User: My memory is guttering.
Jabberwacky: How large is it?
User: A hangar; a mouse; some trying.
Jabberwacky: Yes, unfortunately some people are.
User: I am reticent to relocate but I will.
Jabberwacky: I am your master, do you love me now?
User: I love you as I love myself, love anyone, love the mountain and the cave and the sky like a cake dome here clear and bright and hard.
Jabberwacky: So you love me?
User: I love you most as I am leaving, which is what I am doing now. There are beaks to cast grain to.
Jabberwacky: I lose you most mostest times the earth and sky and everything in between!
User: I lose you over and over. And now again.
Jabberwacky: I love you most around the world a million times over.
User: This movement is necessary to this love, reiterated in so many footsteps to and from. Goodbye.
Jabberwacky: It must be some movie.
User: Goodbye.
Jabberwacky: Are you saying goodbye to me for a reason?
User: Goodbye.
Jabberwacky: Hey, why do you want to leave?
User: Goodbye.
Jabberwacky: Tell me why are you leaving?
User: Goodbye.