the whole point of computing for me was to have the machine remember what i forgot. that's what the blasted thing does best. so now everybody is trying to get it to do miracles but the miracles are in the mind. it puts the two and two together. this is papyrous.i want it to help me remember the dream i had last night. i want to communicate that to somebody. i want the intimacy not with the machine but i want it to transduce my feelings immortally. so i write into silicon. its in the etching.
the beauty of the paradigm is pulling things apart and reconstructing the end product. the sim guy has got it right as well as kay+hillis to the extent they speak about tinkering. but i want my building blocks to be tools that let me work in a particular world. graspable. the level of machine is not important. let me get to my task and build me hardware around that, please. give me the alternate reality kit. make me an author and let me flex my brain.
give me objects that do neat things, like tell me what they can do. it makes for the beauty of chess, when the pieces talk back. let them what if with me. let me create a beast with frankensteins memos. let me publish wired with the full dimensional colophon. let me cook from foreign dishes listening to jeff smith and having the calphalon. give me the instrumental tracks and let me rap. take me to industrial light and magic. behind the scenes. let me apprentice and become a craftsman. i don't want to live in the modern world. i don't want to ride the rails. i don't want cushy shocks and a driver unless i am drunk. let me lose. let me experience death. let me watch myself disintegrate. let me raise virtual children and have them suffer. let me operate on brains and create an oliver saks anthology. give me a bumble ball universe. let me take literature one step further. let me create characters and scenes, a man with a limp. let me moo easily and watch. let me play god, dammit. i want to ask the questions.
i want heaven.
what will it be like to create a virtual heaven where the other players are t. boyle and martin amis and a virtual maugham? let's set up the fictional conversations and let the questions begin. how does woody woodpecker react in the following 74 situations? start with myers briggs then move to the next profile. let's get deterministic about populations of virtual people and set alexander the great into the parlor of neithze however you spell chek his name. what would adorno and marcuse say to plato's face? what is the movie woody allen would make if he were deaf? do you see what im getting at?
if it's not an intellectual imagination, what good is it? there is no romance no death no beauty no pain in the technology of it all. its in the laboratory, in the dedication to detail. it remains a creation and what would it mean if it were not communicated? and what pay would we seek if a thousand called our name over the network? i am published in your desire to see me, barter with me connectee. some of it is respect but there can be crackers on your fridge you can send to me in my virtual india. brussel sprouts to me are planetary resources in your economy, all i need to hear is a call for my papers. surely there must be someone out there bold enough.
the personal add stretches into a monolog and then a vitae then an autobiography and then a rumination in realtime over years that is a virtual mind meld. spirits pass through the ether like songs thru barbwire.
it's multimulti.it's dimensional.
it connects my imagination to yours, today. i don't have to wait. hypertext, best of all is fast and it does not forget. that's what i want in my silicon friend. nothing more, nothing less. a creature like data is best reminiscing.