Me: Look at us!
Anna: What?
Me: I mean, we're talking, face-to-face.
Anna: I guess we are.
Me: Isn't that so analog? Like, there's no electronic interface separating us. We're not holding banana-shaped pieces of plastic to our heads, or pushing buttons. No, we're looking at each other in the face with our eyes and then we're speaking to each other using our vocal chords. How crazy is that?
Anna: Quite remarkable.
Just the other day, Anna and I were contemplating what it means to socialize. I suppose that neither of us has the firmest grasp on the subject, and we spent some time comparing notes on when we considered it appropriate to use a text message. But what freaked us out the most was the sheer size and power of online social networks. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we were left in awe or had our minds boggled. For me, the image that immediately comes to mind when I think of web 2.0 and social networking is that of a glob of grey matter, a mosh pit of neurons, firing off impulses in a storm of activity.
Anyway, Anna recounted how Tumblr, through a string of posts and re-posts of some content that she had made, ended up linking her to an acquaintance who she had not contacted for the better part of a decade. Bizzare. Welcome to the future of human interaction, I guess.
Postscript: Sorry Anna, but I know that that's not how you talk. Well, that's not really how I talk either.
Showing posts with label not too distant future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label not too distant future. Show all posts
03 June 2010
23 February 2010
Day 54
So, I've been doing some planning. Nothing much, just my usual feverish bout of shuffling through course requirement sheets and the like. I'd say this happens every semester or so. I spend two hours thinking I'm recharting the course of my life, only to change it about three months later.
Well, on this current tack, I've got some goodies lined up for myself. For example, one of the classes I plan on taking is simply titled "Trees." Then there's "Wildland Fire Science," which involves a field trip for a proscribed burn. But right now, I'm pretty stoked at the prospect of going abroad. It seems to be all the rage these days, and I sure as heck don't want to be left out of the fun (my brand new passport is just itching to get its first stamp). Specifically, I really want to go to the island of Moorea in French Polynesia, which oddly enough has a UC Berkeley field research station there. Basically, the deal's like this: I go to French Polynesia, my school gives me units.
The decision was not a hard one to make.
But before any of that fun stuff happens, it seems like there's still a formidable amount of drudgery left to slog through. I still have a good deal of weeder courses left: classes engineered to destroy the human soul. The current gameplan involves me staying in Berkeley over the summer to learn all that there is to learn about organic chemistry. Carbon is such a wacky element.
Well, on this current tack, I've got some goodies lined up for myself. For example, one of the classes I plan on taking is simply titled "Trees." Then there's "Wildland Fire Science," which involves a field trip for a proscribed burn. But right now, I'm pretty stoked at the prospect of going abroad. It seems to be all the rage these days, and I sure as heck don't want to be left out of the fun (my brand new passport is just itching to get its first stamp). Specifically, I really want to go to the island of Moorea in French Polynesia, which oddly enough has a UC Berkeley field research station there. Basically, the deal's like this: I go to French Polynesia, my school gives me units.
The decision was not a hard one to make.
But before any of that fun stuff happens, it seems like there's still a formidable amount of drudgery left to slog through. I still have a good deal of weeder courses left: classes engineered to destroy the human soul. The current gameplan involves me staying in Berkeley over the summer to learn all that there is to learn about organic chemistry. Carbon is such a wacky element.
19 February 2010
Day 50
Today I decided that I want to thru-hike the JMT Sobo (translation: I want to walk from Yosemite Valley to Mount Whitney, non-stop).
It's something I've wanted to do since I was 13; I promised myself that I'd hike the whole John Muir Trail as I stood on Half Dome, looking over the Yosemite Valley. I think it only hit me today that I've finally accumulated the skills, equipment, and independence to do so in the six and a half years that have since elapsed.
It's something I've wanted to do since I was 13; I promised myself that I'd hike the whole John Muir Trail as I stood on Half Dome, looking over the Yosemite Valley. I think it only hit me today that I've finally accumulated the skills, equipment, and independence to do so in the six and a half years that have since elapsed.
02 November 2009
NaNoWriMo
Well, as we all know, November is National Novel Writing Month. The last two attempts at literary glory never made it past 10,000 words. But here we go.
The Next Great American Novel
(c) 2009
The bell rang and Josiah was off, out of the gate. He could hear the beeping of the countdown timer on his wristwatch signifying how much time he had left before the chasers were released. An electronic beep came from his wrist and he knew he was screwed. He knew he was screwed before he even got into this mess, before he even landed on this strange and distant land. He knew he was screwed when the flash of lights took him away from his home planet. He could trace it all back to the night he had gone out to tend to his hydroponic fields of hyper-corn.
The growing season that year had been a good one, and the famines in the Central Republic States of Lesser Europa had helped increase demand. Aid agencies the world over were buying up all available stocks of hyper-corn to feed the skeletal peoples of Lesser Europa (in the news, they were pejoratively referred to as "twigs," in addition people from that region spoke a strange dialect of American). Anyway, life couldn't have been going better for a central farmbelt grower of hyper-corn.
But that night was unlike any other. The usual gale-force winds that came from the north had stopped and an unnatural stillness filled the air. Josiah walked over to where the chicken coop used to be where there now stood a large structure of steel and glass that vaguely resembled a greenhouse, but more squat and glowing with a warm orange light. He scanned his thumb and went inside the airlock where he zipped into a hermetically sealed suit. He went through another doorway, this one separated with only vertical strips of clear rubbery plastic. As he checked on the nutrient broth pools, and even the poultry protein ovules seemed to quiver with fear in their petri dishes at the aberrant weather behavior. The backlit glow of the petri dishes cast odd shadows against the ceiling as Josiah paced up and down the rows, methodically checking for molds or other infections in the incubation room.
He liked to think in the incubation room. There it was warm, warmly lit too. The orange light and the gentle humming of the fans pushing the lazy hot air through the room made him feel as if he were in the womb. He could close his eyes, and almost taste what it felt like to be suspended in amniotic fluid. In the room, he liked to think, and he liked to not think. There he could watch the embryos develop with complete involvement, abandon, or disinterest. Whatever he felt he projected into the nutrient broth. On a good day he was feeding America. on a bad day, he was another embryo in a cup, to be consumed or flash-frozen within a metric week of spawning.
The Next Great American Novel
(c) 2009
The bell rang and Josiah was off, out of the gate. He could hear the beeping of the countdown timer on his wristwatch signifying how much time he had left before the chasers were released. An electronic beep came from his wrist and he knew he was screwed. He knew he was screwed before he even got into this mess, before he even landed on this strange and distant land. He knew he was screwed when the flash of lights took him away from his home planet. He could trace it all back to the night he had gone out to tend to his hydroponic fields of hyper-corn.
The growing season that year had been a good one, and the famines in the Central Republic States of Lesser Europa had helped increase demand. Aid agencies the world over were buying up all available stocks of hyper-corn to feed the skeletal peoples of Lesser Europa (in the news, they were pejoratively referred to as "twigs," in addition people from that region spoke a strange dialect of American). Anyway, life couldn't have been going better for a central farmbelt grower of hyper-corn.
But that night was unlike any other. The usual gale-force winds that came from the north had stopped and an unnatural stillness filled the air. Josiah walked over to where the chicken coop used to be where there now stood a large structure of steel and glass that vaguely resembled a greenhouse, but more squat and glowing with a warm orange light. He scanned his thumb and went inside the airlock where he zipped into a hermetically sealed suit. He went through another doorway, this one separated with only vertical strips of clear rubbery plastic. As he checked on the nutrient broth pools, and even the poultry protein ovules seemed to quiver with fear in their petri dishes at the aberrant weather behavior. The backlit glow of the petri dishes cast odd shadows against the ceiling as Josiah paced up and down the rows, methodically checking for molds or other infections in the incubation room.
He liked to think in the incubation room. There it was warm, warmly lit too. The orange light and the gentle humming of the fans pushing the lazy hot air through the room made him feel as if he were in the womb. He could close his eyes, and almost taste what it felt like to be suspended in amniotic fluid. In the room, he liked to think, and he liked to not think. There he could watch the embryos develop with complete involvement, abandon, or disinterest. Whatever he felt he projected into the nutrient broth. On a good day he was feeding America. on a bad day, he was another embryo in a cup, to be consumed or flash-frozen within a metric week of spawning.
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