I had a spooky idea the other day... What if you set up a chat server and programmed in lots of stuff about you - people could then "chat" to 'you' (aka the server) in an albeit simple way.

 Ideally the server would get complex enough to pass the Alun Turing test where the human participant is unsure whether the other participant is human or machine.

 What's the point of this? Well, ghoulishly this could be chatting to the dead. I know, sounds nuts but bear with with! With complex enough software (and a rich enough databases of stories/phrases etc) then interacting with such a service might provide some comfort no? Comfort to the living and maybe comfort to the dead as an "interactive" bit of them is left online.

 But how would the software be able to generate a rich enough picture of you to mimic you? Well, a good start would be social networking - Facebook/Twitter etc these will leave a mamouth trail of data to help reconstruct your chatting traits.

 Perhaps this is why Facebook want to own our data? So that they can sell the "dead chat" service to our loved ones when we've gone!