I dreamt you found me out in a field

[sovay]

My poems "The Marriage He Saw Beneath the Shade" and "Censorship" have been accepted by The Cascadia Subduction Zone. The first of these was written for ashlyme in March when he asked me for a Machenesque poem, even if in practice it came out more like M. John Harrison cross-bred with the famous statue of Pan. The second came out of nowhere at the beginning of this month: I think it had to do with Adresteia. The title is in the sense of Cato, and also just the one it sounds like.

I have been sleeping very little these past few days. Some internal, some environmental reasons. The library sale on Saturday was a success: I left with first editions of David Niven's Bring on the Empty Horses (1975) and John Houseman's Entertainers and the Entertained: Essays on Theater, Film and Television (1986) as well as a very pleasant afternoon with rushthatspeaks; then spent the evening with derspatchel, watching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) for the first time in years. There will be a post when I have slept enough that I feel comfortable throwing even notes at the screen. Last night, we saw Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, introduced by a pioneer of wearable computing; I found his lecture a fascinating mix of stories that really interested me and philosophy I didn't agree with. My plans for today mostly involve rushthatspeaks and catching up on work. One of these I like.

Listening to Timber Timbre for the first time in months, I found myself wishing that someone had vidded Millennium to "Bad Ritual." Oh, well. Maybe they'll do it with Hannibal instead.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I found his lecture a fascinating mix of stories that really interested me and philosophy I didn't agree with.

--This statement, in turn, interests me; I'd love to hear more if and when circumstances and mood permit it.

[sovay]

I'd love to hear more if and when circumstances and mood permit it.

It's not so much a matter of moods: I am in the midst of some health problems I am not discussing online, because in general I don't and medical advice from the internet is never helpful, so it's really a matter of focus and stamina. Basically, I liked his narration of the history of wearable computing and what was then called "augmented reality" (because Timothy Leary had gotten to "artificial reality" first) and I was interested by the examples he showed of the efficacy of proto-Google Glass (of which he is an early adopter, being the project manager) in sorting tasks and embedding information, but I disagree strongly that it needs to be a part of everyone's thoughtless daily lives: that we should all check e-mail as blink-automatically as we look at our watches; that I need a screen overlaid on my visual field so that I can look significantly at jellyfish and pull up the Wikipedia entry, or capture video of a family birthday to preserve it forever. That is what research and my memory are for. I believe that integrating a wearable computer into the last twenty years of his life worked for him (even if I am always a little skeptical of people who say that an innovation made them "more powerful," because I don't know what they mean or want by power); I wouldn't ask him to take it off. It wouldn't work for me. I need the ability to unplug. I need to live without the expectation that I will respond to e-mail the instant it comes in, that my attention is constantly fragmentable, that I want to be scanning on all channels for messages and videos and cat macros and updates. Discount all issues of privacy (which he skirted by talking about how interaction with Google Glass still requires recognizable vocal or physical commands, so that it can't be done stealthily; I don't believe that will last any longer than the first person who decides to break it because they can) and I still don't want to live in a world where everything is all access all the time. His work, he said, was all about closing the gap between intention and action. Anyone who has ever fired off an e-mail and then regretted it—or just hit reply-all instead of reply—should know that gap is a lifesaver somtimes.

And he was an enthusiastic storyteller, but not a very organized one, so when he looked out into the audience and delivered his summing-up of the future of wearable computing in measured, complete sentences, with another person I'd have said he'd memorized his closing words; with him, I was fairly certain he was reading off his glass. And that was interesting.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Your wonderful, full answer came at a time when I couldn't read or reply, and then, because I am queen of short-term memory loss, the fact that you'd replied disappeared from my operating knowledge until I saw your most recent post. AT that point I realized, Wait! She answered my question about the guy's discussion. So here I am back again, and reading.

That is what research and my memory are for. --Absolutely. As we know from the history of the adoption of reading and books as a technology: when you do adopt a technology for the preservation and transmission of knowledge, you can gain some things, but some things will be lost (for instance, the ability to memorize great chunks of information through repetition, and then to recall and repeat them as needed). Whether you think it's a net improvement or loss depends on what suite of skills and way of life you prefer.

I need to live without the expectation that I will respond to e-mail the instant it comes in --Yes, this is why I don't generally use a cell phone. I don't want to be reachable absolutely anywhere. I want to be able to be away.

Thanks for this. And now that I have the most recent post of yours, I know at least some of the health problems you're in the midst of, which gives reading this reply now a weird, time-traveling element to it.

[sovay]

As we know from the history of the adoption of reading and books as a technology: when you do adopt a technology for the preservation and transmission of knowledge, you can gain some things, but some things will be lost (for instance, the ability to memorize great chunks of information through repetition, and then to recall and repeat them as needed).

I know my memory is not what it was when I was studying multiple languages and performing on a regular basis; I hate the loss. It is something I am trying to figure out how to reintroduce before my brain turns into slurry. I would rather have the ability to memorize at length even if I didn't use it that frequently. You never know when you'll need something like that. I really don't like the idea of a world which attempts to guarantee that you never, ever will.

I don't want to be reachable absolutely anywhere. I want to be able to be away.

Yes. I have a cellphone—I had to get one in 2003 when I moved to New Haven and the landline didn't work until I'd hooked it up for myself—but it is not capable of e-mail or instant messaging and I like it that way. It still flips open, for God's sake. It doesn't have a keyboard.

And now that I have the most recent post of yours, I know at least some of the health problems you're in the midst of, which gives reading this reply now a weird, time-traveling element to it.

Heh. Falling in the theater actually wasn't one of the health problems I was thinking of, because it had just happened. But it hasn't helped.