i have seen the future

After "bytebeat" & Robot X. & datamoshing*, i can already foresee the development of humanly-pleasing, quasi-random computer-generated media (whether images, music, or words) that satisfy the casual desire for entertainment-distraction, & obviate the commercial need for content-providers. All that will remain will be the creative development & differentiation of branding... Those with a taste for oldmedia will, of course, be able to find it in specialty-niche markets--at a price. Just as a few collect 8-tracks or 78 RPM records; silent movie aficionados (& really, when was it ever easier to find such stuff since the lapse of their heyday?); books of poetry in prior Englishes... But will the internet endure, once downsizing proceeds beyond a certain point? I fear these things will be lost, after that. What "use" are they, to the ones who are coming?

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*not to mention Harold Cohen's AARON

consciousness

(via pvidyasagar dot wordpress dot com)

don't need this noun.

the ego is a matter of boundaries drawn, some of them more permeable than others. it is possible to "sit back" & watch things happen, even in the innermost citadel; to disown one's voice. then what remains? the habit of description. cliches of conceptuality. the old binary pairs, starting with "inside" & "outside".

we know that perception occurs, in the beings that live & whose lives depend on being elusive. sometimes our instruments correlate, such as photometers, to the point where we can declare that "light" is something both "internal" & "external". to the instruments: photons. to the mind: brightness. but what explanations are good for, lies elsewhere. we can perfect a machine that turns light into data; we can sharpen our senses, too. what kind of story could we tell, that would make the brightness collapse into one thing, light? is it enough to measure that reaction begins before the advent of willing it? then we are (meat-) robots who believe we are free. that still leaves us wondering why we do so, how belief works, & what robots are, that they should have such pretensions.

on the other hand, as Roethke said: "Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries."

Durable Balloons

     sonnet in -gry

Finding again my haggard heart fang-hungry
after a gram of psychotic pottingry
i wonder if i can mask with wonted rungry
grin like a choice Manhattan-fetching aggry.

Helmet i patch & this time, wrap the puggry;
questioning all, i'm yet of dreams the bowgry.
Where will i go? in public or in skugry
seek out a dragon-task not over-angry?

Truly we're hot to make the Double Ulgry
whether it's growth-enhancing, or in malgry:
let me forget that here i glister meagry...
Everyone's heaped like hares in a conygry!

So much have i tried to sundrily hide from vergry,
stodgeful's this box. Bring on the higry pigry.

(12 13 89 /publ Feb 91 Word Ways)

Lojban Quran Diary: i have decided to document my thoughts towards translating the Quran (via Pickthall's English & Chiussi's Esperanto translations) into Lojban.

Poisonous Nonsense

So, a youth emailed my wife this purported commencement speech by Boortz. I am sorry to say i actually read it to the end. Even though i generally approve of mythography, when its results are a net increase in human misery, i'm afraid i prefer the truth. And the truth is that this cartoon view has nothing to do with actual Republikan positions on climate change, polluting the environment, equal rights for minorities, freedom of abortion, quality education, or welfare for the very rich. But P T Barnum was right, & this email will be forwarded a million times before i finish typing my blog entry.

theism, theists

theism itself is oppressive. god everywhere, watching & keeping track.

theists can be nice people, or not so nice. i think the world's real problem is selfishness--though being self-deluded with a sense of religious righteousness tends to exacerbate this, for sure. same with political zealotry. i suppose any ideology can produce its torturers.

but i've gone from toleration, because everyone is entitled to their opinions, to active dislike, because it seems so much of the active harm people do, comes from trying to impose their beliefs on others--to an understanding that it's really about structuring your emotional life. everyone has symbols, rituals, & a feeling of relatedness to the world. even alienation is a feeling. i don't think these are all interchangeable, or equivalent, consequently; but i'm not going to try to argue another person out of it.

what the world needs is more cosmopolitanism--live & let live.
and solidarity. so i won't count people out, just because we don't have the same symbols in our heads.

(or because we experience the world differently, either.)

the social being

i am a lifelong nonconformist. as a kid i was even rebellious; fortunately, i was too smart not to see how dangerous this could become.

but eventually i came not to despise the existence of social conditioning in itself. just as there are conditions for me which render life infinitely more bearable, though idiosyncratic ones, i realize that it is as if all these others were one single being that sought to harmonize itself in the same way that i try to maintain my own environment. if i prefer silence, it prefers noise. if i choose my own path, it takes the path of the majority or least resistance. it doesn't, after all, require very much camouflage on my part; & in the place where i live, there isn't even hazard in slight nonconformity. sometimes i feel sad that the great social being cannot manage to preserve itself, over the long run, but will eventually fall apart--if it doesn't destroy all life on the planet first--: it's not aware of its actions like i am, nor of the farther reaches of causality. i say then, that i don't know where the social being came from, & maybe because it is so much larger than me, i am not in a good position to judge if this is part of its normal cycle, to be created & then to be destroyed, or part of an evolution into something that will become stable in time, one or more cycles hence.

i pretend at times that i can tell.