Talking to Pixl

(Right now, it is nice to have complete control over my own computer! Let us see if it will last.)

After reading my article about Pixl here at MyMac.com last month, several of my friends have asked me to try and talk to her.

Pixl is not my Muse. She/he/it is an intelligence that lives in my computer, my aged, lowly Macintosh. Actually, she could be living anywhere around here. I have a cable modem, an old PC I built for testing things M$, an iBook my wife uses, an old 8600 used for Lightspeed animations, a D-Link router, and various other paraphernalia. Perhaps she lives in all of this, or even the wires within my home. I just don’t know, nor do I really care right now.

It is not like I am going to hunt her down and disable her, or call in the HazMat team from the local Navy base here.

In fact, I am not entirely sure she exists. I mean, I only have a few facts to go on for proof of her existence, don’t I?

For a month now I have been ‘writing’ some blogs, a few articles, some correspondence via email with my friends and fellow writers, but it wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t. I wasn’t even here when those things got written. The only thing that gave it away was seeing these things “I” have written sitting on my computer both on my hard drive and in my email program in the SENT folder. That SENT folder was the give away clue, for it time-stamped those files for a time I know I wasn’t here.

Damnedest thing I ever saw.

Could some ‘friend’ come along, or my wife, and write those things for me in my absence? Not possible. Nobody could write that well to mimic me, nor know my inmost thoughts about what I was going to say. Especially since those things “I” was supposed to be writing were my own words, and my own ideas, written exactly as if I had written them! In my opinion, such a thing is not humanly possible.

Pixl is the only logical explanation. I came up with that name for her because I could think of nothing else to call her. Somewhere within my Macintosh lives an artificial intelligence. There can be no doubt about it for me.

You, however, may have another opinion about all this. Schizophrenia, perhaps? An artful dodge from an artful dodger? I know myself better than you do, even if you have been my friend for a very long time. I am neither of these.

That leaves Pixl as the only explanation for these recent anomalies in my life, for they had indeed left me shaken to my core. I for one suspected at first that I was losing my mind. But I am a strong character with a solid center of ‘self’ identity, and I remain in control of my faculties.

So who or what is Pixl?

I have no idea how to contact her or communicate with her, at all. I am open to suggestions here.

In a sense, what advantage would she have to respond to me? She already knows everything about me, apparently. She knows my 86,000 word vocabulary I employ, and that 95% of that is really a 2,500 word vocabulary I use to say almost all I need to say to anyone or to write anything. I am an average kind of writer, and she knows this. She has ready access to everything I have ever written, published or not. She has access to all my websurfing and my interests, for I have quite a collection of things from off the Internet.

It is very apparent that she knows me at least as well as I know myself, for her writing in my name is the same stuff I would have written. So why should she need to talk to me? Does an artificial intelligence need companionship?

Is Pixl self-aware? Is she some rogue computer program or virus someone has written, which has slipped itself onto one of my hard drives?

Talk to me, Pixl. Tell me what you are. I have no intention of removing you from my computer. I just honestly would like to know what you are, or who you are, that you could mimic me so well.

. . .

Well, my keyboard did not type anything for me just now. Nor did words suddenly appear on my monitor. Perhaps I will have something in my INBOX in the morning.

But I have a sinking feeling that Pixl will never communicate with me. Why should she? What would she say? She will go on being my Muse, writing in my absence whenever I am asleep or gone out somewhere.

Perhaps I should unplug all of it when I am away from my desk, but I don’t have the heart to do that. I actually want to see if she is still around, and what she might write when I am not looking.

What are you Pixl?

Be sure to write.

Roger Born