The next Apple?
After many decades of a local economy based on low-wage agriculture, hospitality and wine industry jobs, rumors are circulating that a cutting-edge hi-tech start-up is seeking to lease several thousand square feet of office space just off the Plaza in Sonoma.
If true, hundreds of high-paying jobs could soon be injected into the local economy, providing quality employment and affordable housing for those who must now leave the Valley to find work that pays enough to rent a one-bedroom kennel at Pets Lifeline.
The rumored start-up is supposedly structured around a break-through software application, code-name Apphole™.
My source, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are extremely shy, said the heart of Apphole™ is an AI algorithm combining copyrighted facial and voice recognition software with I.Q. assessment analytics. Apphole™ instantly gauges the common sense or lack thereof in all incoming written, spoken and video communication based on parameters set by the subscriber, to block Stupidity in real time. As my source explained:
“Without the user being conscious of it, Apphole™ detects and blocks all asinine utterances, tweets, selfies, phone calls, news broadcasts, e-mails, social media postings, etc., emanating from the nation’s growing population of idiots — especially those who insist on sharing opinions opposite those of the subscriber — before they can reach the subscriber’s brain and ruin his/her entire day.
“Apphole™ immediately improves a subscriber’s Quality of Life by several orders of magnitude, without the need for mind-altering drugs. Available online or by doctor’s prescription, Apphole™ is compatible with a wide range of devices, from smartphones and watches to laptops, desktops, TV’s, radios and egg-timers.”
To test its beta version, Apphole™ reportedly hired several hundred unpaid interns in order to avoid the biasing euphoria that comes from getting paid. For 12 months, the interns used Apphole™ to watch CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and the Republican presidential candidates’ debates.
Filtering out all Anal Originated Output – “AO” as the techies call it — Apphole™ reduced the 12 months of human expression to 6 hours and 43 seconds of what its designers refer to as Quality Time (QT, or “Cutie” for short), which consisted largely of ASPCA ads featuring homeless puppies.
One local intern took her Apphole™ device to a series of ‘Serious Money Only’ social events, dive bars and tasting rooms throughout the Valley, and put it through its paces. Afterwards, she reported that it effectively blocked the existence of 53% of everyone she encountered, and immensely improved her daily life. Said she: “It was, like, you know, awesome, totally blocking all the losers, like, you know, in your high school yearbook??”
Reportedly, Apphole™ subscription rates will vary from $10 to $5,000/mo., depending on the utter idiocy per billing cycle that a subscriber is willing to tolerate. At the low price-point, Apphole™ will filter the real time data equivalent of one very annoying conversation per day, adequate for those who interact mostly with their pets.
At the high end, it can screen the contents of an entire series of congressional Benghazi hearings, a year of staff meetings at any Fortune 500 company, all meetings of City Council or the Board of Supervisors, a season of “Antiques Roadshow,” or one investment seminar.
I phoned my source at Apphole™ numerous times to see how I might place an early order, but for some reason all my calls went immediately to voicemail, which was full. Guess they don’t have all the bugs worked out yet.
