When were you first Turing-tricked?
For me it was in like 1998 when I was in a users’ forum IRC chat room with bunch of Debian (linux) users. I kept asking neophyte questions like “how do you use apt-get” and they kept deferring my questions to some guy named Frank.
“Frank, tell Mark about apt-get.”
And Frank spit out a bunch of stuff about apt-get.
Everyone in the room kept sending the really easy questions to Frank, and what struck me was the manner in which they spoke to him: they were really rude and direct. I kept thanking Frank, and did not understand why the others weren’t extending him the same respect.
So anyway… blah blah blah I was engaged in a social interaction with this thing for a good minute or so before I realized that I was talking to a bot. Whatever: my belief was not suspended for that long, but long enough to give me a jolt. The feeling is probably akin to standing next to someone in an elevator and turning to them to ask the time and then realizing they are a mannequin. (one of my pet peeves in fact.)
Although it wore off quickly, the initial novelty of talking to a (somewhat useful) bot was exhilirating.
[more on this later]
February 1st, 2006 at 8:32 pm
[…] As for “keeping data current”, you would want spiders, when possible. I have always wanted a system that recognizes a spider as a “user” or “contributor” along with its human counterparts. (To have both humans and bots in the same table makes me shudder with excitement and reminds me of a story.) As for trust metrics, imagine a slashdot where people contribute not articles but well-defined, structured data?  (If you could get this easy enough for end-users to do, and you could set up an online shop, people would probably come knocking.) […]