Brains working towards machine consciousness

 Thanks to @shirleyearley for her blog post reminding me about the competition.  I think I might be a bit unusual in this, so it will be interesting to see other entries!

I only really use my phone for internet access - email, Twitter and a spot of browsing, plus some vitally important text messages about when I will be home for dinner, and I don't use any form of portable noise maker except on very rare occasions, so the phone and iPod/MP3 player will be no loss to me... or will it?  With a good deal of bravado, I can put all the tech to one side for a day. It won't be a problem, I am a resourceful chap.  I can remember how to operate without that stuff.

Waking up, I instinctively go to check my emails and Twitter to see what the rest of the world has been up to… OK, so I remember they aren’t available. I shall occupy my mind on the commute to work (as I can’t work from home today, obviously) with ideas about my PhD project.  It involves online communities, and analysing feeds from things like Twitter, so I decide to think about something else, as that is going to be very frustrating given I can’t test anything today.  When I arrive, I can’t find a swathe of papers to read using Google Scholar, so I make my way to the library. I wonder what is happening at various conferences, but have no way of finding out today.  I consider going and knocking on doors to organise this week’s seminar, but that would take too long and disturb people. At the library, I remember how few journals they actually have related to my subjects now. At least they have decent coffee.

I want to write a new piece on Digital Identity – but I’d have to copy and paste it to our collaboration server tomorrow, so there doesn’t seem much point right now. Everyone else is busy – it would be nice to connect with people around the world right now. Never mind, I can book tickets for my trip next week – only, that will mean I have to phone the station, and I have no idea what their number is now.

I spend a little while building a mind map of our various research projects, and how they link to subject areas we teach. I’d like to add references to web based resources – but I’ve outsourced my memory of such things to the ‘net, so that will have to wait. Save it to my local machine – and write a note to remind me to upload it tomorrow.

A student comes and asks me why I am ignoring their emails and Tweets. I spend 10 minutes helping them – they wasted an hour finding me for that. You know what? I am going to take the afternoon off, and go and play with my 2 year old Godson. He wants to watch Timmy on iPlayer…