As I rocket across the globe, enjoying serious face-time with Silicon Valley CEOs, Hollywood bigwigs, Wall Street wizards, European Prime Ministers, and people from other planets, I often hear the same curious question warbled out at me by the likes of you, Gentle Reader, as I dash, say, from my private jet on the runway in Athens to the limousine that will take me to my summer home along the Aegean, to wit: "Ridicholas, will computers ever be able to replace people?"

socio-politico-mocha-latte cyber-breakthroughs): By the mighty beard of Zeus! I'm positively enervated with a cathartic sort of exhilaration!

CyberCompanion (Visibly moved by my arrival): Of course you are! Being a genius is hard work, Ridicholas, my good man! And with all those curvaceous, beautiful Ph.D. candidate/nymphettes chasing after you on the street, how can you be expected to concentrate on the work that will one day net you the coveted Nobel prize for Cyberspace Stupendousity?!? Oh, yes, by the by, Mired magazine called again about featuring you in their "Clothes Horses of the Internet" cover story. I told the fools to email you, of course! Aah ... hahahaha.

Ah, how cybersatisfying that would be! However, for the sake of recalibrating the IQ level of our little chatauqua back below the 200-mark, I will now gift you with a glimpse of how this fascinating cybertunity would most likely be squandered by the digitally homeless likes of you, Mr. "Six-of-Beer-on-My-Somatosphere":

You (Yes, you, getting home from a futile attempt at "work" that resembles the animated rantings of a deranged zoo animal more than the purposeful actions of a productive Homo Sapiens): Yo! (Have I approximated your charming street vernacular correctly, my proud Stallonephile?!?) Jeez, I'm freakin' pooped! I godda taka loadoff!

CyberCompanion (Visibly nauseated by your arrival): I'll bet you are, my Shirking-Class Hero! Living by rote must be exhausting, but on the other hand, you must be used to it by now, ambitionless Willie Loman that you are! I imagine that the universal scorn of your compeers must be taking its toll on your already frayed nervous system, especially in light of that whole "cleaning woman" incident that you so transparently deny. Oh, yes, by the way, FlickFest called again about those "Married with Children" videos that were due last year. (Snivels aristocratically)

Well, I guess we can all use a little comeuppance now and again, can't we, Spartacus?!? Obviously, our feisty digital creation has the discernment of a Maitre 'd at Spago's when it comes to sussing out the social standing of one of its carbon-based brethren. But don't feel too bad — you still have this humble column with which to enrich your denuded mind and bolster your sagging spirit. "In Exaggeronte veritas," as they say.

Back into the Shaker, Noble Salt of the Earth

Alas, I must take my leave. A certain microscopic megamogul and I have arranged for tennis at a certain Chinese Premier's private club on top of the Great Wall in 30 minutes; while you, gentle reader, must surely be resuming your epic struggle with your crumpled Word-Finder Puzzlebook or the latest Soldier of Fortune or whatever it is you do when you're not reading my 3-D (didactic downloaded dicta) musings.

Fare thee well, and Godspeed as you attempt to digest the phantasmagorial feast I have laid before you in the form of this issues's column. I must off: Gates awaits! Oops ... I mean ... uhh ... never actually met the guy ... journalistic objectivity and all that, you know ... heh ... what I meant was that the ... the ... the "gates" (yes, that's it!) at my lavish compound are ... uhh ... controlled by a complex set of satellite-controlled "weights," and that, well, isn't that just dandy for me! Ahem ... Adieu, my Digital Everyman. And remember to tune in next time.

Next Issue: Running the CyberCampaign.

After disrupting your plebeian sensibilities with staccato, robotic arm gestures and a monotone "Sorry | I | do | not | understand | the | question," I say, "Yes-and yet-no!!! Aah ... ha ha ha ha hahaha..." Then I bound, panther-like, into the sleek vehicle, which probably contains someone famous like Dennis Rodman surfing the Net on a Powerbook 920L, which is not officially due out till 1998, but luckily I lifted an alpha version from Gil Amelio's spare office in Cupertino.

He Ain't Heavy ...
He's My A.I. Amigo

Let me clear the cobwebs away from your Roseanne-soaked mind: what I meant by that last inscrutable pre-limo riposte is this: it's quite possible that we could combine:

A) the corporeal, hyper-tangible, spatiality of a "wired" crash-test dummy;

B) the humanissimos of a special A.I. language created by my fellow geniuses at the MEdia-Lab at MIT (send_dinero@MEdia-lab.com); and

C) a Rorschach-Myers-Chopra user-calibrated data set...

... to create ... yes, I must tell the world! A CyberCompanion!!!

"Ridiculous!," you eventually say? "Yes, may I help you?," I retort, Oscar Wilde-like, scrambling away yet again with the feral strength of an animated wildebeest into a fusion-powered French megacopter that burns uranium and '78 sauvignon blanc for fuel. Disarmed by my gigabyte-sized corpus callosum and T3-line-speed wit, you stare mutely ahead, listening like the gently dozing bovine that you are as I astound you with the audacious notion that these Virtual IntelliHomeez could actually do the following:

A) sit around on the couch in your "living" room (or, say, the Egyptian loveseat at my Greek getaway-the only place, by the way, that I keep any of those antiquated paper artifacts that you mortals call "books");

B) respond to your words via VRS (Voice Recognition SpeakWare); and

C) ambulate around the room via our new MEdia-Lab TIAS technology (BTW, TIAS=Tinfoil in a Shoebox)

Artificial Intelligence ...
Meet Exceptional Intelligence

Yes, by all means, continue masticating on that mental cud, unwitting Luddite, as I treat you to a sample of the dialogue that might unfold between such a digital amanuensis and myself:

Ridicholas Exaggeronte (Getting home from a hard day of important