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January 17, 2007

Capitalist Tools in the Garden of Good and Evil

Jan 15, 2007 -- Malcolmation, Inc. finally announced today the commercial release of the iMalcolm -- a fully interactive, nearly all-weather, First Life device that can automatically respond to audio or visual stimuli across a vast range of distances and situations including art, greed, work, envy, sports, sloth, thrift, etc., etc.

The rechargeable iMalcolm runs on bioenergy and can go a full 40 hours without new fuel, although its built-in monitoring system will make it complain with increasing persistence after the first 24, and old fuel seems to do the trick, too.

The iMalcolm is probably not for everyone; to begin with, its protective covers are often much more expensive than expected if durable, despite the huge array of available styles. Without the covers, the device is often fully functional but not entirely practical in many environments. And it lacks the now-customary out-of-the-box Chicklets aesthetic that a well-known market leader has pushed to the front of almost every product line. Furthermore, steady users of iMalcolm say that it is probably more interesting than it is reliable.

Yet many say that having an iMalcolm around is almost as good as hanging out with a completely sentient person.

Malcolmation's product managers claim that the original idea for the iMalcolm cropped up in the 1950's but that it took nearly all the time until now for a critical mass of consumers to care enough about the current feature mix.

"Well," they said, "plenty of users have cared, actually; but not enough, until now, to be sure we should keep the name."

Fired-up senior management at Malcolmation also claim that by the time they have to defend the rights to the name, their full family of peer devices including iKiki, iCampbell and iXia will already be in circulation as well. They're even passing out shirts and cartes-des-visite to the first 3000 new users, that say "iKnow Who iAm"

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at January 17, 2007 5:57 PM

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Comments

Where do I go to get the T-shirt?

Posted by: Bruce MacEwen at January 18, 2007 8:26 AM

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