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"There's a tendency to think that maybe if we can just throw enough hardware at the AI problem, then evolution can take care of the rest. Certainly that's how God went about making us."
- Rudy Rucker

Mook  
  Computer-based proxy that deals with communication.  

He flicked on Eddy’s mediator, to boot the wallscreen. Before he could try anything with the cablebox, his mother’s mook pounced upon the screen. On Eddy’s giant wallscreen, the mook’s waxy, computer-generated face looked like a plump satin pillowcase. Its bowtie was as big as a racing shoe.
Technovelgy from Bicycle Repairman, by Bruce Sterling.
Published by Intersections in 1997
Additional resources -

Here's more:

He flicked on Eddy’s mediator, to boot the wallscreen. Before he could try anything with the cable-box, his mother’s mook pounced upon the screen. On Eddy’s giant wallscreen, the mook’s waxy computer-generated face looked like a plump satin pillowcase. Its bow tie was as big as a racing shoe.

“Please hold for an incoming vidcall from Andrea Schweik of Carnac Instruments,” the mook uttered unctuously.

Lyle cordially despised all lowdown phonetagging artificially intelli- gent mooks. For a while, in his teenage years, Lyle himself had owned a mook, an off-the-shelf shareware job that he’d installed in the condo’s phone. Like most mooks, Lyle’s mook had one primary role: dealing with unsolicited phone calls from other people’s mooks. In Lyle’s case these were the creepy mooks of career counselors, school psychiatrists, truancy cops, and other official hindrances. When Lyle’s mook launched and ran, it appeared online as a sly warty dwarf that drooled green ichor and talked in a basso grumble.

But Lyle hadn’t given his mook the properly meticulous care-and-de- bugging that such fragile little constructs demanded, and eventually his cheap mook had collapsed into artificial insanity.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Bicycle Repairman
  More Ideas and Technology by Bruce Sterling
  Tech news articles related to Bicycle Repairman
  Tech news articles related to works by Bruce Sterling

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