WRT: Writer Response Theory

The WRT feeds (RSS atom etc.) were broken for a week - apologies. If you unsubscribed and want to resubscribe, just use the standard WRT feed URL.

Here is a list of places that offer (mostly) free data for you to add knowledge to your bot. This can be done through a live feed and or in most cases by downloading the files for extraction from a database. I personally have not utilised these as yet but can see the benefits for […]

Google’s Master Plan, uploaded by jurvetson.
In June 2005 several photos were posted on Flickr of the Google Master Plan - a humorous whiteboard at Google headquarters with a humorous flowchart-style outline of developments towards world domination, with some credible entries (”hiring” “portal”) some controversial ones (”Google OS” “programming language”) and some ridiculous (”Develop A. Develop […]

For those interested in ARGs, the DVD of the ARG Fest that I’ve mentioned before is available for free via Bitorrent, through Grey Lodge. The contents include:
1) Perplex City by Mind Candy Ltd with Michael Smith and Adrian Hon
2) The Art of the Heist by the PM team with Mike Monello, Brian Cain, Brian Clark, […]

WRT is searching for films that include chatbots or talking computers beyond the usual 2001 et al.

There are several lists of movies featuring robots or replicants, ala Blade Runner, but this list will be more oriented towards simple-reflex agents without physical bodies. Of course, we may also have to exclude movies with talking computer interfaces (ala Star Trek) in order to keep the list under control. Perhaps a better idea would be films that have a prominent character that is a chatbot–or perhaps where the computer-generated speech is central.

One questionable title is the 2001 release s1m0ne, written and directed by Andrew Niccol. The question remains, is this film about a chatbot or just a 3-D CGI puppet?