The Flood and the Algorithmic Ark, the Fifth and Final Character

The fifth character. I remembered the term this time. Welcome to the theater. The characters are all in their places, waiting for you to arrive and the play to begin. You are the sole audience—a command performance. Don’t you feel as regal as the queen? You command the players at your will, tell them what to do and they will do it, but please be aware that they are the ones manipulating you. They are massaging your will and you are utterly unaware.  They are the power behind the throne that comes through the cable set in the floor. The cable we eagerly plug ourselves into, thinking, believing with the fervor of a fanatic, that it is benevolent and loving. All is set and the flood’s about to begin. No worries, we are assured, the Algorithmic Ark will carry us onward into the all absorbing Ethernet Nirvana.

The Flood and the Algorithmic Ark, Part IV: the Fourth Letter

The fourth letter. I won’t tell you which one. I should have said “character” because that opens the door to the entire keyboard, including those little characters seldom, if ever, used. Who knows what all those keys mean anyway? They add no clarity, only confusion, like the notorious backslash in s/he. An ugly hybrid, a sterile offspring of mismatched species. I’ll use the term “character”  next time and let your imagination follow. The curtain will open and all the characters will parade out in their make-up and costumes. Characters, not reality, not real people, not the kind you can touch or kiss or caress. No, on the computer all is virtual, which means empty and a sham. Nothing here but code, a binary digital code in which the world is reduced to on/off, either/or, yes/no. The black and white sort of world that broaches no middling ground. The place of politics and bifurcation. A binary world of extremes.  The judgment seat of God with the goats on one hand and the sheep on the other.

The Flood and theAlgorithmick Ark, Part III: the 3rd Letter

This is a continuation of the previous two blogs in which turning on the computer is discussed by way of a manual typewriter.

I type in the third letter of the password. The third letter. It sounds ominous like opening the seals of the apocalypse. It is a vowel but I won't tell you which one because then you would be that much closer to discovering my password and that password would open too much of my life. You would be able to read my emails and check the history of every cite I have peered into, and what should that reveal? What would my secret life show, if anything at all? Forays into pornography? Looking up how to make meth? Contact with the forces of darkness at hellandsatan.com, or does he have his own domain like satan@hell.hell? There are some, I am sure,w who would give Satan a web site, but not God. Satan is ever the handmaiden of technology and his evil plan is to ensnare us in his technological demise. After all, the first craftsman was Tubal-cain, the descendant of Cain, the first murder. What else needs be said to prove the satanic source of technological advancement. (Music came by way of Jubal, Tubal-cain's brother, but we need not go there.) No one is mentioned as inventing writing.

The computer screen has gone to sleep. One touch on the pad and I wake it up, a gentle touch like that to awaken an infant, a caress. Why don't we call swiping the screen caressing the screen? Why take a word that  carries the undertow of stealth and stealing. Why "swipe" unless something nefarious is going on? Words betray their intent if you listen closely enough. Words have their own lives and meanings so that when used loosely, more is given than the speaker intended. Swipe. Look at it. What is stolen and who is the sneak-thief, the cunning and underhanded thief who smiles and walks away with your wallet, leaving you thankful you have been stolen from? Swipe. I swipe card through the reader at the grocery store and the details of all my purchases have been stolen and stored away. Swipe. The computer knows everything you do. The internet, with its mawing chasm for information, its infinite storage systems knows all about you in ways that would have made the Stasi, the East German Secret Police marvel at how readily we give ourselves over to surveillance. Orwell's Big Brother had to use coercion and torture in a secret room. But not us. We embrace and love Big Brother without thinking. We sign up for membership to gather our "points." That's the magic word now: "points." Join and win "points." Win, as if you had entered a challenging contest, a test of strength or skill and you win; you best them all. You get the gold medal. Get more points by going online and filling in their survey. The marketing department tracks every motion we make, and we, in all innocence, go along not realizing we've not won but lost. Everything known about us is available to the highest bidder.

The Flood and the Algorithmic Ark, Part II

This is a continuation of the previous blog.

The second letter of the password.  I am that much closer to being dissolved, that much closer to annihilation that comes with the absorption of more data, more information than I could possibly use. Data about international and local politics, or about wars in distant countries that I can do nothing about. Why do I follow the news when I can make no difference? I write no policy. I am utterly powerless to do anything. I am like a father standing by the hospital bed of a dying daughter, unable to do anything except feel the powerlessness that drains hope. The knees crumple to prayer that God would make a special case from among the millions of dying children in the world and stop natural progression, turning death's hand from this child.

I cry for peace. Kyrie, kyrie eleison. Send peace, O Lord. Peace in our time, please send us. Amen

The Flood and the Algorithmic Ark

The following was originally composed on a 1950’s Voss manual typewriter.

I just made the mistake of turning on the computer. It was too easy, too close to hand and I fell to the temptation. Temptation is easy to fall into, like the beckoning of the third Manhattan. The third one gets you, that’s the one to watch out for. Not the first.

Now I’ve clicked on my name and am one step closer to falling into the time absorbing arms of the internet. I could rationalize it and say it is on my list of daily tasks of work to do, but that’s not so. I want to fall into its arms and let my life be taken away, let the times of my life be absorbed into the Ethernet, into the cloud to join the angels in the clouds playing harps and biding time until the clouds rain down their data bits. And the Lord releases the bits stored in the hidden vaults under Yucca Mountains and they rise and inundate the earth with bits and bytes. No one thought of building an algorithmic ark to rise above the flood of data that overwhelms and drowns the innocent. 

The machine calls, like the whale calling to Ahab. Must I go? Must I give in? I enter the first letter of my password. Now it is there forever. If I backspace, the keystroke, the human action that touched a key to send an electronic signal, will be remembered. This machine is so unlike my typewriter that is free of radical electrons and can’t get cancer.

Benno von Archimboldi

Unless you have read Bolano's 2666, the name of the famous author Benno von Archimboldi is unfamiliar. If the curious were to go searching Amazon for Archimboldi's work, she would find nothing because this famous writer is famous only in Bolano's book. He does not exist and none of his books exist. When I discovered his nonexistence, I grew more interested in the types of books he would have written, had he existed. Would they have been short, like Camus' novellas? Or hefty tomes? What would the quality of the printing and binding be? Attracting me further is the business model for his publisher, Bubis. A publishing run of Archimboldi's books was about 300 copies distributed among booksellers Bubis had visited. This leads me to consider publishing today, or least the limited perspective I have. With CENTURY FARM finished, I've been marketing it through the regular route of agents with no success to date. The lack of success is expected, but troublesome. I could compound this with the massive shifts going on in publishing, not only ebooks (which is old news) but the rise of monopolies in publishing with recent mergers. I could run off in despair, but not yet.

Wintering Tomatoes

The laughter of the tomatoes
is silenced by the cold. Chilled,
they hang quietly in pinkish infancy,
never to redden in the stress
of growing old.