nameless child (sonogram)

Been reading up on stuff (1000+ posts that need sorting out in my demonfeeder), and upon flipping through Whatever came upon a post interesting enough to want to click through to the comment (this post which is a blog-to-blog discussion), Cow Watcher snatched a thought here:

#23 by Doc Rocketscience on December 29, 2010 - 1:22 pm

John, as a result of this I just read the original post from 2006 for the first time. I have some questions. I note that comments are still open there.Would you prefer that I contribute to that (albeit quite dusty) discussion, or this?

#24 by John Scalzi on December 29, 2010 - 1:23 pm

Either is fine but if you want people interested in that particular essay to see them, it’s probably better to put them there rather than here.

See how that works, where with all the crossing and linking possible, between computers, information, platforms, programs, whatever,  in the end the thing that is our master remains time. No matter what we invent to help us link, we remain linear creatures and must make linear decisions. Will there come a day where we can develop split personalities for every moment we have to spin off our digital self into old parts of the digital world, or will we develop a sense, a social ritual or handshake to indicate we're visitors from the future and that at the same time allows us to instalink to it. A rollerdex of spinoff blips or something. Am I making sense? I don't mean developing some sort of digital agent to do the job for us (because it's a SF idea and besides I'm already using that idea). Usually, when we humans change the world (as the abstract place the world is after processing by our brain), it's by using old tools. Tools we know, inside and out, and use on new problems. In the same way the first ever smiley (click for archeological reference) changed the language we use to communicate, turning us into embryonic Bester* machines.
Anyways, sense or not digiblips, into the New Project container it goes with other thoughts on digiblippery and networking. Note to self: the baby still needs a name.

On the topic of instalinking and moving from one world/workspace/headspace to the next, my mind finds tabs mightily difficult to sort out the last few days. It happens once in a while, and I don't know how to fix it. At work I was totally lost between the running programs/groups in the taskbar and Excel tabs, always flipping the wrong things to the surface. It's not even a "clickspaces being in the same area" thing, since the Firefox tabs are currently also annoying the crap out of my digital-spatial senses. Like working in a cramped office on a cluttered desk. It only exists in digispace and yet it is so cluttered I can never seem to find the right piece of paper and I'm muttering to myself about "where did I see/put that thing?".
Why is my mind so confused? Is it working on stuff and not communicating, or is it the yello-boogers' influence (sinusitis yay!)?



* I don't mean something made by  Bester Machine Enterprise Co.,Lt from Japan, which makes "printers machinery for cup noodles, ice cream, pudding etc." whatever that actually might be. What I meant was actually the way in which reading Bester (specifically Golem100) teaches your mind to think differently about the tools we use to express language, the ink on paper, the characters defined after centuries of convention. And suddenly a semi-colon is not just punctuation but a reduced image of a set of winking eyes, and math and language are not so different...  

from Alfred Bester's Golem100

meep meep

haz work changes: roster will change to 3 days a week, since it's no use going for a half-time job and sitting the other half of my time on a train or in a station waiting for one. yay!

done some writing on train/lunch break. with pen and paper !gasp! and also a bit on laptop. editing Barynn 1 to make voice and shtuff fit with Barynn 2. this might be a never-ending-cycle, digiblips. thought about that while thinking of some ideas I had to fiddle a bit with Dreams of Cold Stone, and realized editors must be like cameras: it's only when the manuscript passes through their lenses that it becomes immutable, capturing the moment.

started Palmer's Version 43, stuttered. He does annoying characters a bit too well.

picked up Abraham's 2nd omnibus Season of War and breezed through that instead. hooked hubby on Stross, hubby went out and bought all the Stross he could find. now I need a ladder to tackle my to-be-read pile. methinks whenever vampire/Moscow nights runs out of steam, there will be Laundry universe waiting.

hubby also bought all the Le Carré he could find for rereading. keeps telling me I really should read some. I eye the TBR pile and make non-committal noises, or mumble something about him really needing to finish the beta-reading of Tiger of Opal and trying not to sarcasnap about how Le Carré is the new Pynchon in the house.

it snowed. thawed a bit. snowed some more. and some more. making that going to work thing just that little bit more interesting.

some of the flux (not work) imploxidated all over the place. my head turned itself inside out and is now in a much better place. picked up Version 43 again. and finished. note-to-self: need to put a cnepur backup on laptop so I can prep the blog on train (or in station).

started Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief. like the story sofar though it took a while for the narrative to hold my attention, in spite of all the interesting new words, because you see, I don't like your similes, sir, no siree, don't like them at all.

meanwhile still no new government in Belgium:

• good point: apparently not having panicky egos at the helm helped to stabilize the economy, though they keep telling us that's a fluke, an illusion that won't hold until tomorrow, don't believe the hype pretty please
• good point: since the ship doesn't sink, it dawns on the sailors that maybe they don't really need that many captains, mm?
• bad point: during the slow but steady negotiations (they're talking about really big reforms, so give them time and space) it becomes more and more apparent that Europe is like a nirvana and all the serious, experienced politicians of this small but confusing country have transcended the last couple of years leaving only the idiots in this quagmire of communities, languages, and egos. we're left with the dregs, damnit
• bad point: some minor routine stuff running afoul, for instance the signatures needed to hand social institutes the money they've been alotted in budget need to come from areal/ full government. so some governmental social institutes had to loan money from real banks to pay the needy (at stellar rates of course, like as if society ever did something for the banks, innit just so?), meaning said institutes will have less to hand out to the needy, or need more of my tax euros than foreseen which I would be okay with if it wasn't simply to hand some more tax money to the banks. they've already got their fair share for the next century or so, I'd say.

In all: all Belgium seems to need is a Harry Tuttle.