This week’s Futures story is eLiza and it marks a welcome return for Aaron Moskalik. Last time, Aaron introduced us to the Ghosts in the machine. This time, he’s tackling a more sales-oriented issue. You can find out more about Aaron’s work at his website. Here he reveals what inspired his latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing eLiza

My wife, Val, and I share an Amazon and an Apple account. One side effect of this is I can tell what she is interested in buying just by looking at the ads appearing next to my online e-mail account.

“I see you were shopping for portable power stations today.”

“We might need something to keep us going if the grid goes down.” Val is ever the practical one.

 My mind tends to stray towards the bigger picture. “Isn’t it odd that search data from one account seem to appear in other places. It’s almost as if there is just one Big Data out there.”

Val made a face. “That’s a bit creepy.”

“But Big Data doesn’t really get us, does it? I mean, it can’t even tell we are two different people.”

“Yeah, so? Most door-to-door salesmen just read a script. The good ones have tricks to get you to yes, but they don’t really know anything about us personally.”

“What if they did, though? What if you combined the face-to-face of door-to-door with the personalized information of Big Data. What if the salesman knew exactly what buttons to push?”

“That might make a good story. You should write that.”

I filed this thought away. A few days later I awoke from a dream. As the cobwebs faded, I was left with a sense of deep loneliness. I couldn’t connect the feeling with anything real, so my mind went back to idea of the Big Data-aware salesman. What if he could read my feelings and map them back to something real. What might he do with this ability?

Or she. And so, eLiza was born.