http://meliza.org/itoaeky/ en-us Nucleus CMS v3.32 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://meliza.org/itoaeky//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://meliza.org/itoaeky/ http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=92 What we do in here is listen. Before the mind can make sense it must become receptive, and it can only receive what it is prepared to.

Only part of this preparation is conscious, verbal, or deliberate. Much more takes place beneath the surface, in memories that cannot be named or described. The sound of a bird's song, the sense of how much a piece of clay will yield, the coordination of muscles in ice skating backwards: sometimes these things appear in a flash, but no one who experiences these minor forms of enlightenment is unaware of how many hours of silence and boredom and uncertainty preceded them.

The incredible ability of biological systems to do this, to absorb and acquire information. Why the strange separation between so many forms of knowledge and the verbal centers? Why the profoundness of feeling when those barriers are broken?]]> General http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=92 Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:57:27 -0500 http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=86
My relationship with technology goes back a long time, personally and historically. My first computer was a Texas Instruments 99/4A, which I got as an unexpected Christmas present, probably in 1983. The RF adaptor that let it display on the television was broken, and not understanding this, I stared for hours at the snow on channel 3 waiting for something to emerge. I had played a few video games on display models at stores, and that’s probably what I expected to do with the computer. I’m not sure it occurred to me that the games were an expression of a complicated system of logical devices and instructions, until something broke and I was forced to consider things from an internal perspective.

Once we got the computer working I played my fair share of video games, but we only had a couple of them, and I started working my way through a book of BASIC programs. There was no way to save the programs so I was forced to write them out each time I wanted to run them. Gradually the exercise became less about typing as I started thinking about what the programs were doing. BASIC doesn’t have a lot of complexity, but in many respects the instructions are close to what the microprocessor actually has to do, so it’s a good way to learn fundamental principles of computer operation that more abstract languages obscure by design.

Around that time I met my best friend Jason, who was similarly fascinated by computers and how they worked. While other kids were stomping on angry mushrooms we wrote our own games. We were particularly interested in using computers to communicate with each other and with other nerds. We tied our parents’ phone lines up for hours with our 2400 baud modems connecting to paleolithic networks called bulletin boards or BBSes. People could post notes and files publicly or send messages to other users. Information would filter slowly from one BBS to another, and we found documents that described how to build sound cards and other pieces of hardware. Not very many people even knew these networks existed, and the whole enterprise was new and exciting and a bit secret, as I imagine basic physics and chemistry were back in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

By the time I got to high school we were hearing rumors about something called the Internet. One of the BBSes we used was intermittently connected to it, so we were able to send email to anywhere in the world, though the turnaround was at least a day. That was still a lot faster than “snail mail”, though its usefulness was limited by the fact that no one we knew outside of our little group used it. We eventually found out that my high school had a computer that was connected to the Internet all the time, so we could connect with modems and use it directly. There wasn’t a lot out there, it wasn’t linked up extensively, and everything was limited to text. The connection was too slow to send graphics anyway.

High school was also when I discovered Linux. I liked the idea of a system where I could see everything that was under the hood and tinker with it. There wasn’t a lot of software, and pretty much everything required getting under the hood and tinkering. Tasks that would have been simple and streamlined under a commercial OS usually required a number of steps. The documentation was good, but it required a lot of searching, and good search engines were just a gleam in the computer industry’s eyes back then.

I suppose I’m a bit nostalgic for the days when I had time and patience to tinker with things I didn’t understand completely. I still get to do quite a bit of it in my work, which I’ll discuss later, but there’s almost always a goal these days, and if something someone else built happens to work well enough that’s usually good enough for me. That change in attitude is undoubtedly a function of getting older and acquiring goals and responsibilities. There may be an analogous maturation process with technologies, progressing from questions about how things work, to how to apply them, to what one can use them for. Science to engineering to marketing, I suppose. But as I grow older my interests seem to have regressed. I loathe marketing, put up with engineering, and would really prefer to spend most of my time observing.]]> General http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=86 Tue, 15 Mar 2011 09:04:54 -0500 http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=82
Here we have so fully confused the issue that we get few of the benefits of either approach. Modern academics have very little time for contemplation, and far too much of their work is in the service of the demands of society, which is growing more frivolous, distracted, and violent-minded by the day, to judge by the sorts of ideas that occupy front and center stage of our public lives. Rational arguments are drowned out in the mindless scream. They have a voice, of course, and many people hear it, but the effort of trying to filter out the dreck closes the ears to new ideas.

I'm still glad to be here, and thankful to the people who educated me. It's a good thing to have a strong mind that can stand up for itself, and a strong mind is something that can be passed on to other people, regardless of how talented they are. You don't have to be smart to think for yourself. But you do have to fight for it. Human societies only exist because there is some tendency in the mind to act with the group. That tendency gives rise to internal resistance and external pressure, because other humans feel the same desires. There will always be a tension between the university and culture; the question is how to respond to it.]]> General http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=82 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:39:05 -0500 http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=80 Even after all these years spring does not fail to surprise me, how it emerges with such terrifying glory from what seemed like bare ground. I don't worry so much about this planet when I know how quickly the grass will come up through the cracks and the nightjars take possession of the McMansions, but it is sad to watch us try to shut all that life, which is intimately ours, out of our hearts because it scares us.]]> General http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=80 Tue, 11 May 2010 16:58:09 -0500 http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=78
and,

"Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. His nesting places--the activities that are intimately associated with boredom--are already extinct in the cities and declining in the country as well."

And we are hardly ever bored any more. We keep ourselves so busy there is no place for memory to grow into anything more than information, and this prevents us from encountering the things that can really change us.]]> slow information http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=78 Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:51:25 -0500 http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=75

For Buy Nothing Day I went to Sleeping Bear Dunes, up in lower Michigan just west of Traverse Bay. It's about three hundred miles from Chicago, which took about seven hours to drive at my moseying pace. I love these long drives to the edges of the world, swimming up the interstates and their tributaries. I can't say much for small town Michigan. Muskegon, Ludington, Manistee, all seem molded from the same cheap plastic. I watched the town where I grew up follow the same trajectory, from open fields to pavement swarming with angry machines. It used to make me angry too; it used to have power over my own wild spaces. Now I just drive slowly, carrying my peace with me, looking at everything.

The dunes are formed by winds carrying sand over the lakes, where there is nothing to slow them down, until they reach the land and lose velocity. The shape of the dunes already there influences the movements of the wind, so the land shapes itself. This sort of feedback can lead to chaotic behavior: a five hundred foot dune seemingly content with its view will suddenly split in half or wander a hundred feet downwind. In such conditions life's contingency is immediately apparent.

And now it has laid aside its glory, and become small and quiet. Whatever you see is only a trace of its former existence, or its quiet hope for a future existence. It is a wilderness as profound as the emptiest desert. The heart's silences grow.

Knowledge of nature, like all knowledge, requires a setting aside of what had previously passed for truth. Anyone who claims science can be achieved without entering into ignorance and confusion is only a theorist. But in this respect the knowledge of nature differs: it is not only the mind that must be surrendered, but the body as well. If it is not placed, at least a little, at the mercy of the elements and its own needs, the most vital fact will be missed. You cannot even begin to speak the language until you become as vulnerable as the lives that you want to know.
]]> General http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=75 Wed, 9 Dec 2009 18:41:26 -0600 http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=73
It was an excess of beauty, and we had nothing to do but let it flow through our fingers.

]]> General http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=73 Mon, 5 Oct 2009 22:30:53 -0500 http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=72 There is a pleasant little mystery in the workings of physiology. So much goes on below the level of consciousness, but at times the more substantial changes become noticeable. The mechanisms are often unknown, and in any case they seem to have nothing to do with the inner experience of the transformation.

This is not to say that they are inaccessible to the understanding. The potter does not need to know the physics of clay to shape it. When the substance in question is governed by a complex web of finely balanced interactions -- when it is alive -- the supremacy of the intuition is even more evident. There are general rules, but these all contradict each other, and only become coherent to the observer who is completely immersed in the life that gave rise to them. It is a form of understanding that never destroys the sense of wonder.

I've been biking a lot this summer, ever since I moved up to North and Western, twelve miles or so from work. Not with any deep commitment -- I'll hop in the car if it's raining or if I know I need to stay late -- but enough to shave about 10 or 15 minutes off my time, and provoke my muscles into some unexpected construction. Age and experience have taught me to expect more complaining and a general tendency toward deterioriation, so the impression of there being some alien process at work in me is particularly strong.

There may be a general principle in this. Making a place for oneself in the world (which inevitably means society) is a process of setting up barriers. These are both internal to the mind, compartmentalizing the desires, and external to it, dividing the world into realms where various needs can be met. Experience creates forms and expectations, and an order emerges. But this order is static, and the internal life inevitably comes into conflict with it. Life is inherently inimical to these constructions; it accepts many contradictions, but its central unity will always find expression.]]> General http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=72 Sun, 6 Sep 2009 16:48:07 -0500 http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=71 In the dark unseeing conceive the source.
Knit with desire they spring up,
Surprised at their lightness. Something green
Gnaws at the stones in last year's tunnels,
Saved from ice by nimble hands
Serving other purposes.]]> General http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=71 Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:32:00 -0500 http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=67 I linked a while back to a series of articles at The Hope Chest about vampire automobiles. Now there's an excellent article in Friday's New York Times by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan about the origin and development of the vampire myth, and why it seems to be gaining in power these days.

They emphasize that while the substance of the myth is probably very old, the modern species came into existence around the time when technology was making it possible to travel and communicate over great distances, drawing people into a ever tightening web in which information (and we have to include viruses in this category, which may explain the connection between vampires and disease in Nosferatu, for example) could spread with great rapidity. That web is only growing tighter:

The wireless technology we carry in our pockets today was the stuff of the science fiction in our youth. Our technological arrogance mirrors more and more the Wellsian dystopia of dissatisfaction, while allowing us to feel safe and connected at all times. We can call, see or hear almost anything and anyone no matter where we are. For most people then, the only remote place remains within. “Know thyself” we do not.

Or truly know each other, I would add.]]> slow information http://meliza.org/itoaeky/index.php?itemid=67 Mon, 3 Aug 2009 17:02:50 -0500