The Artificial Passenger

I’m afraid you’ll have to bear with me a while longer. Things are hectic round here at the moment and without my laptop, I’m pretty useless. How on earth did writers cope before computers? They must have had a whole lot more discipline and patience than I do, I think.

I’ve been reading Counting Sheep by Paul Martin recently (well worth reading if you’re interested in sleep and dreaming, and easy to read too). There’s a section that particularly caught my interest about something called the ‘Artificial Passenger’, developed by IBM to reduce accidents caused by sleepiness. Has anyone come across this? It’s designed to go in cars, programmed with personal information about the driver. The idea is that it can hold a conversation with you, even tell you jokes, to keep you stimulated while you’re driving. It judges your responses on intonation and speed and if it concludes that you’re falling asleep, it opens a window, sounds an alarm or sprays water at you to keep you awake. Which I imagine could be quite dangerous in itself, but one assumes this has all been safety tested.

Apart from the fact that this seems like an insane idea, I can’t imagine how it can possibly work. Even if it knows all your favourite conversational subjects, how can it know enough about them to provide enough engaging conversational material to keep your mind busy? I imagine the conversation would be a little one-sided.

While I’m all for looking for ways to reduce road accidents, this idea seems a bit crazy to me. The idea of any kind of artificial company worries me. What’s wrong with a good night’s sleep and/or a real passenger? One who actually knows you and has a natural ability to converse.

The idea reminds me a little bit of Paro the Seal, a robotic baby seal that responds to human voice and touch, invented in Japan for use in nursing homes and hospitals. It was designed as a therapy tool, and is apparently very effective in reducing stress and promoting social interaction between patients. But I find the idea a bit creepy. Yes it’s very cute, but there’s something disturbing about watching cared-for adults talking to an inanimate object. It just feels very patronising.

I leave you with Paro. And I have to say, I can see the attraction. Which is, perhaps, what frightens me.


Image by Aaron Biggs

The End

Having looked forward to my writing retreat for the best part of a year, it seems strange now that it’s over. It was such an amazing opportunity and I would jump at the chance to do it again.

The first couple of days were a bit overwhelming. Here I was in voluntary isolation with grand plans to write the whole first draft of a full-length novel. I was in a beautiful place with no one to share it with, and I wasn’t going to have any phone reception for two weeks. Oh dear, I thought. Why have you done this to yourself?

And then, after a couple of long days of arduous writing and feeling sorry for myself, the sun came out and I went for a spectacular walk along the cliff side. I’d made a good dent in the first section of my novel by this stage, and it didn’t seem quite so hopeless. I stopped thinking of my trip as some kind of lonely holiday and started enjoying it in the spirit I'd intended: as a taste of a different way of life. And once I got that sorted, I was fine.

I spent my days writing and walking along the coast. I absolutely fell in love with the place. It was achingly beautiful, and I loved falling asleep to the sound of the waves and waking up to the squabbling seagulls. I would eat breakfast in the garden, watching the waves lap against the wall, and in the evening I would walk to the top of the hill to watch the sun set over the sea. Everything became beautifully timeless, and the structure of my days began to be guided by daylight and tides instead of the hands on my watch. If I could live like that forever, I would be very happy.

I hit my writing target, not quite in word count, but certainly in terms of content. I have come back with a first draft, and (as you might expect from a first draft) it’s hideously rough and has an awfully long way to go before it will be readable. But it’s there. It’s written. And around my ordinary life, that would have been impossible in two weeks.

Now I’m back in the real world where I have to think about other things than my characters and go back to work in the mornings. Which is a hard adjustment after two weeks that, simultaneously somehow, seemed both to fly by and last forever, as though I’d never lived any other kind of life.

Since I’ve been back, my computer seems to have collapsed with exhaustion and is currently refusing to turn on. So my plans of catching up online have been thwarted and I may be lying low for a little while longer yet.

Adjusting

I thought you might like to see where I’m hiding.


I’m three days into my adventure, and I’ve been finding it quite hard to adjust to being so isolated. I’ve been writing to my targets, but I haven’t found it particularly fulfilling. Not, that is, until today.


Today I unearthed a little of my writing mojo and remembered what it is that writing means to me, what I believe writing should be. Hopefully that’s back to stay for the rest of my time here, and now I can really crack on with the task in hand.


I’ve been learning some things about myself while I’ve been alone out here, and realising the things that I take for granted at home. I don’t think I really realised how hard this would be; it’s taken rather more adjusting than I’d considered. But I’m hoping the adjustments have been made, and that I’m strong enough to just get on with it all now.


I have a lot of work still to do, and while I’ve been meeting my targets, I don’t really feel like I’ve started working to my full potential yet. But there’s still time.


This, after all, is only the beginning of my journey.