Telecoms Unveil New Technology Exploiting Intelligent Design

Expecting huge response, Telecoms Offer New Technology To Promote User Satisfaction.
New York, N.Y. - A consortium of telecom providers today announced a new service they are calling “Intelligent Call Loss”. Intended to lower stress and induce generally higher levels of happiness in its customers, this service is designed to promote phone calling, and thus increase profits. Although the technology was expensive to develop, this service will be offered for free.

The spokesperson for the industry stated that a key player in the development refused to participate if users were to be charged, and then proceeded to decline royalties. Under these conditions, the industry spokesperson asserted, it was in their interest to provide the service for free.

The technology, apparently, pre-screens all phone calls for the effect they will have on the recipient. Those calls which are deemed to induce stress are terminated, or in the parlance of the technology, “lost”.

“I'd like to see their algorithm” said one industry observer. “I can't imagine how they make those predictions”.

Another observer, looking startled, asked whether missed phone calls wouldn't often induce more stress later, to which the spokesperson replied, “This is a very powerful program. It utilizes key proprietary services that ensure that the long term effect of lost calls will be positive..”

On the subject of privacy, the spokesperson asserted that the service would be provided “when requested”, but that the industry was confident that the service would sell itself, and that customers would willingly allow the privacy intrusion to gain the benefit of the service.

The technology, according to the press release distributed at the time of the press conference, is based on new artificial intelligence algorithms and proprietary hardware that tap into “intelligent design”. “On the theory that the evolution of the universe and of life has followed intelligent interventions”, scientists were quoted in the literature as saying, “we reasoned that traces of these interventions ought to be discernible in the fundamental fabric of the physical world. Tracing what we believed to be the end product of these intelligent interventions, the human soul, back through brain structure, chemistry, and physics, we found inequalities in the physics equations more or less where we expected them to be. We were thrilled, of course, but not surprised. We had faith they'd be there.”

Utilizing new work in evolutionary software and artificial intelligence, researchers were able to use these “trace inequalities”, as they are called, to engineer algorithms that would pipe knowledge of future outcomes directly into a data base.

“From there, it was simple. All we had to do was compare the future outcomes with the real-time phone calls.” the press release stated.

The idea of data being piped from the future to the present struck many present as fantastical and un-credible. “We realize this will be difficult to believe, but the technology has been thoroughly tested. It works.”, the spokesperson stated.

A key event in the research was construction of a computer whose information processing is affected by one of the physics inequalities. “The output”, a scientist is quoted as saying, “isn't at first comprehensible. This is why we needed an intelligent designer to intervene. Luckily he did. It was just a message typed onto the screen of the inequality computer, but it was very soon obvious that he knew what he was talking about. It was like talking to an engineer somewhere, seeing some code show up on your screen, and suddenly knowing you have met the answer.”.

Asked who the key player was, and how they were key, the spokesperson blushed and answered, “Umm, we're not sure. However I can tell you that we communicated through the computers that were built using trace inequalities, and that we could not offer this service with out this key player's intervention and cooperation.”

In private conversations later, the scientist reported that there was a brief on-screen negotiation over rights of use, further assistance and other key improvements to the system. This scientist also declined to name this key player.

When asked whether the use of “intelligent design” might be a direct reference to God, the spokesperson stated that the engineers who built the system could not rule out this interpretation, but that they had no way to prove it, either. "Other interpretations do not satisfy" the spokesperson agreed.

In later developments, Lawyers for consumers groups and business groups separately announced they would probably challenge the right of the phone company to “lose” phone calls, to which the consortium spokesperson answered that intelligent design of the system would prevent any lawsuits from prevailing. “Someone wants this to work, and when we raised that objection – invasion of privacy and all that – he said 'Don't worry. Success has been designed in.' After all, those people have to use phones, don't they?"

Asked for their response to these developments, several federal security officials expressed bemused doubt and anxiety. "This could prove advantageous, if we can use it to predict national disasters or terrorist strikes, but it could also prove problematic if terrorists got their hands on it." said one, on conditions of anonymity.

In Congress, several members reacted with outrage. "How can they think of doing this without the approval of the FCC?" steamed one. It was later reported that he was taken to the hospital for a brain aneurysm. Another, who vowed to pen a bill preventing such a service from coming into operation was later heard demanding from her staff a pen that would write.