We've Got Your Number...

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OK, just about to sit down and watch the movie "The Numbers Station" starring John Cusack, released in 2013.We've seen it before, but I was prompted to dig it out again by a voicemail message on my phone earlier on today, while we were at lunch in The Bull Inn, Biwmares, Ynys Môn. It was from a number familiar to me as it keeps calling both my and Jane's mobiles and our landline on a regular basis. But as we operate a strict policy - as I think the majority of the population do now - of not answering any number unknown to us, the call always gets trapped by voicemail. In this particular case, the result is always a truncated message of a robot voice reading out a string of numbers without context or framing, like an email with no subject, an anonymous sender, and content that makes no sense whatsoever. In short, gobbledegook. I guess that the numbers represent some attempt to convey a return phone number, but it is always incomplete and without the necessary contextual information to render it in any conceivable way remotely useful, either to receiver or sender.

Fragrantly pointless, and delightfully surreal, the concept of machines talking fruitlessly to other machines in virtual spaces, unheard by the humans to whom the messages are directed is simply delicious. The fulcrum of this ramble, however, is the fact that there still exists what would seem at first to be a hangover from the Cold War: 'Numbers Stations': shortwave transmissions of a call sign - often musical - followed by repeated number groups, these days often read by speech-synthesising machines, in a one way transmission in the hope that remotely situated operatives will pick up and respond to these covert messages. In fact, these enigmatic little broadcasts have been going for much longer: back as far as WWI in fact, transmitted in Morse code in the day, and this one way messaging practice continues to the present.

The wonderful thing about the voicemail messages thing, though, is that whilst the numbers stations can at least rely on willing recipients listening out for their instructions, the robots autodialling our devices are themselves throwing one-way messages in virtual bottles out over the ether, only to be picked up by other, uncomprehending robots at the far end. The corollary to this is: picture the scenario of an AI entity in the rôle of the cold-caller, messaging an AI entity in the receiving voicemail system. Back and forth, back and forth, neither capable of actioning anything, but each attempting vainly to respond intelligently to the other, in a virtual universe of their own. How would the AI cope? Could an AI entity have a nervous breakdown and throw a wobbly through work-related stress? Interesting thought experiment, methinks. By the way, the telephone number of this 'numbers station' of a robot is +44 (0)3332202550. Please feel free to have fun with it. To quote HAL9000 in its death-throes in 2001, A Space Odyssey: '...Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do...'



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