The Concept of "Pet" as a Sentient Smartphone

As a child I had a vivid imagination when playing with my toys, especially I remember thinking that my trains and cars talked, and I spent many happy hours chatting with them.  This desire did not diminish as I grew up and to my delight in the 70’s talking electronic devices started to appear. They spoke a few words only, but they fascinated me as I wondered how the technology would evolve. 

    
I decided on a career in the electronics industry, and my first fifteen years of work were in consumer electronics development. This was the golden time of Electronics in the 70/80’s as I worked on early personal computers and development tools. I remember an electronic speech synthesis motherboard, which I could programme to speak a limited word set. I brought it home and demonstrated it to my children explaining that one-day many toys and consumer products would talk and that you would be eventually able to hold a conversation with them.

After I had retired, I started writing, and my life-long thoughts of a conversation with an inanimate object fascinated me to the extent I had to include the concept. The big question was how. My frustrations of the inadequate performance of cell phones at that time (2004) came to mind, and that enlightened me to consider an interactive talking smartphone as an attractive proposition. Clearly, it would have to offer features way beyond talking, messaging and other functional applications that the smartphone providers could envisage. 

As you will have noticed from your own experiences with smartphones, the vendors offered many features with the latest delivery systems but failed to realise that the key application that users would hook onto was messaging. Therefore, a sentient smartphone would be the ‘Killer Application’ as it would make obsolete the current trend in products and applications. It would perform whatever task is required by the user, and not by the providers. For maximum effectiveness, when embedded within the body it would provide the sensor functions of sight, smell, speech and sound. In this way, the device would bi-directionally communicate with what you view, hear and speak and be your extended source of sound, vision and smell, and would become your closest friend and companion.

With these concepts in mind, I conceived Pet in my first novel ‘Island Homes’ as Kath’s companion device. The year is 2145 and Kath graduates at the University of Dunedin in New Zealand, her ambition, to be a teacher, find a partner and have children. Lonely, with all her friends having left town she purchases the latest Smartphone, which she names Pet and with whom she builds a relationship. This Smartphone is sentient and is the coolest product on the planet. Kath and Pet become inseparable and together they embark on finding her a job, friends, and romance. Her adventures start the day she starts teaching. The events that follow turn out to be far beyond her wildest dreams and her life is dramatically changed when by luck another girl Holly on the other side of the world contacts her using her companion device.

Maybe, this is a far-fetched idea, but you have to consider how fast electronics and software developments are progressing. In the past, we had hard-wired phones in our homes, then we had simple cell phones to provide the same functions, and today we have smartphones and tablets. These devices are complex and offer fantastic features and performance, but they are primitive as they are not sentient. Future products will be sentient with no buttons, no connectors, no need for charging and no apps, only a screen and a sentient microchip. Ultimately, I imagine the Microchip will connect to the brain directly. Thus, the device will be your friend for life and record everything you do. It will be your memory and communications centre, and your secret friend.

The social consequences will be immense, but they are already today with the irritation of people talking and messaging everywhere you go. In time, it will be normal for people to be talking and thought speaking to their companions and real friends. Maybe, that is a more acceptable social interaction.