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Personal Daemons and Customization
March 8, 2008
I’ve been thinking and writing for years now about what I call Personal Daemons. These are sets of preferences, attributes, and interests that are “broadcasted” to others everywhere you go. The key component of these daemons is that they interact constantly with other daemons that are physically near them, e.g. people, restaurants, homes, businesses, entertainment venues, etc.
This interaction is done transparently on your behalf by the daemons themselves, and the interaction is managed by your personal assistant which controls when you are notified of certain things (as well as your security settings).
Daemon examples
This is best understood with some examples.
Daemon information is compartmentalized into security groupings. It’s really all one daemon, but it appears as many. For example:
Your public daemon broadcasts information that anyone can see; perhaps your name, and the fact that you like dogs. It also broadcasts other preference types, such as favorite coffee, and foods, and music types—but only to certain other types of daemon (restaurants, for example). Your public daemon is what interacts most with the public daemons of the people and places around you.
Let’s look quickly at a particular person: Chris. Chris is a 21-year-old single guy who went to school for film and loves manga. He’s standing in line at a Starbucks in a small town outside of San Diego.
When he walked up to the counter, the following things happened:
The store’s daemon interacted with his daemon, and knew his most common order, the fact that he was a rewards member, his most frequented Starbucks, the fact that he’s eligible for a free pastry, etc.
The store’s daemon told his daemon what was playing on the store’s sound system, and did matching for artists that Chris might be interested in. It also told his daemon that on Thursday there’ll be an open mic poetry reading in this branch. It also mentioned that the girl at the counter is named Julie.
Chris’s personal assistant (his mobile device) then speaks into his ear: “Chris, you should ask Julie about the poetry even happening on Thursday.” It made the decision to interrupt Chris because it knows he likes poetry as well.
Then someone comes up in line behind him, a girl, and a chime goes off in his ear. His assistant speaks again, “Chris, don’t look now, but the girl behind you also loves manga and has the same favorite three movies as you. She also drives a BMW 3-series.”
At that point, Chris can turn around and introduce himself to her, which she might be expecting since her assistant might have told her about him as well.
Other examples of profile information
There is a mass of information you can put in your daemons—some of which is only open to people who are verified through trusted services to be part of a group (Mommy groups, veterans, boy scouts, etc.), and other information is age restricted, such as sexual preferences, etc.
Here are some more ideas for what can be included in your profile/daemon:
Your entire dating profile
What you’re looking for in a guy/girl
Your entire favorite lists of movies, books, foods, restaurants, poems, cars, dogs, TV shows, outdoor activities, sexual positions, desserts, etc.
The high school you went to (only available to those who are confirmed to have gone there as well)
Your current mood
Your current relationship status
What you’re eating
Note that all of this is going into your profile, but only some of it is relevant locally, i.e. using your current geo information. Other parts of it can just be added to your status on sites like Facebook, etc. It’s just you, after all.
Personalization based on daemons
Another interesting thing you can do with this is massively personalize everything around you. So your daemon (think of it as your assistant, which we’ll call Brenton) is constantly observing your preferences and asking you if you want him to store them. Examples:
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You get on a first class flight and you get asked what kind of drink you’d like, it asks you to record the answer, and you say yes (some of this can be automated, obviously)
Seat position
Time of day you like playing golf
Stuff you want on your chocolate sundae
Your favorite sports
Temperature preferences
Etc.
So remember that other things have daemons as well. Cars, homes, chairs, businesses, restaurants, etc. And those things do (and will) have a myriad of customizable settings.
Sports Bars are playing music. They’re showing sports on TV. They even have different types of waiter/waitress.
You could walk into a sports bar and have all the TVs turn to MMA because the restaurant’s daemon knows you like it. And you’re greeted by a tall guy with dark hair because that’s what your profile says you like in a waiter. On first contact he brings you an iced tea with extra lemon, because the restaurant told him that’s what you like.
And you can do voting with it.
Let’s say you’re in a place that plays music, and there are like 100 people in there. Well, your daemons are all voting for your music choice. And if enough people agree it’ll move in one direction or another. And maybe you won a competition there earlier, so you get the power of 50 votes as a result, so people have to ask you to play something.
Same with temperature inside a restaurant. People vote (either actively or passively) and the restaurant adjusts.
Summary
The concept is simple: You have daemons and you have assistants. The daemons get parsed constantly by other daemons based on physical location, and they provide information to your assistants, which speak to you in your ear.
In addition, any entity with adjustable settings (even humans) can take input from other peoples’ daemon information. Examples include adjusting the temperature in a restaurant, changing what’s playing on TV in a sports bar, or your assistant telling you that it’s time to start cutting back on the Canadian jokes.
Input welcome.