...And All We Ever Were, Just Zeros and Ones

Also sprach Trent Reznor*, just one example of how the idea is perpetuated that the building blocks of binary which form our empires of information completely overlook the emotional reality of what it is to be human. How could a computer possibly conceive of love and hate, joy and despair, fear and boredom, when all it knows is on and off, definitely yes or definitely no?

Oh, these "arts types" enjoy their computer/science bashing. Take Chris Martin of Coldplay, for example. He says of the naming of Coldplay's album, "X&Y", that X and Y are the variables one wants to find in (the sloppily defined) "science". (Incidentally, that's not what you want to find. You want to find Ψ and θ. And γ, λ, α, β, ω, ρ, μ, ε. Practically anything that's not in the roman alphabet.) In the hopes of seeming sagely he expresses bewilderment at not knowing these answers, a sense that somehow, poetically, science doesn't provide the meaning of life, or indeed any degree of emotional or spiritual significance. Just 0's and 1's, X's and Y's to be found.**

But here's the thing. How did Trent tell us about the impersonality of electronics? He sang it, with searing compassion, into a microphone which broke every nuance of his voice into myriads of 0's and 1's. These were burned onto a CD which, when placed in a CD player, sent the 0's and 1's through metal tracks and junctions of silicone to produce minute fluctuations of a speaker cone. And when we heard it we were moved, because it was beautiful.

What of pictures? In a digital age pictures are stored and reproduced, just as with music, by lots and lots of switches, on or off. And for the image having been subjected to this process, the kittens are no less cute and fluffy, and it is no less horrifying to see victims of war.

Literature of any kind is even easier to explain. Instead of an approximation, the case here is simply one of translating the lettering system of a language into another. The ASCII code uses just seven bits and can with that represent not only the alphabet in upper and lower case, but also an extensive array of other goodies like punctuation, the copyright and trademark symbols and all those other weird marks you don't have a clue about. Seven switches on and off in different combinations - enough combinations reproduces anything you have ever read.

It follows that binary must have some power beyond the merely computational. What the mechanisms of this are, I have no idea. Somewhere between the source and the observer is an emotional vacuum, and yet, if the source is poignant enough, the observer will feel it. What the implications of this are I have no idea either.

Am I even making any sense? I'll shut up now.


xkcd


* - Yes, I know I've been mentioning Nine Inch Nails an awful lot in this blog. I am not an obsessive compulsive nut, this is mere coincidence.
** - In the course of trying to clarify my meaning I may have twisted Chris Martin's words a bit out of shape. Perhaps he means something else, but I think this is what he means. I have never payed attention to Coldplay for long enough to find out anything about them, except what I write here, and I'm pretty sure that was by accident.

Once Upon a Time (In a Dress)

A very long time ago, my mother decided to get me into child modelling. She put me into a dress (which I hated) and took me over to Aunt's house and her beautiful, capacious garden, where Aunt took many photos of me. These photos were sent to the modelling agencies, and I was for a while called to do many auditions for television ads.

Around that time I loved nothing more than to enjoy the beautiful summer by swimming in the pool at my house. I used to collect Puppy in my Pocket, little plastic puppies frozen into various amusing or cute poses, which came with "fact cards" that stated, top trumps style, which puppies were the most intelligent, huggable, obedient, etc. How very marvellous of the manufacturers to discover a way to quantitatively measure huggability, and then relate this factor, scaled 1 to 10, to little lumps of plastic! But I digress... One of the things I enjoyed doing most with these puppies was to throw them into the pool and then go diving for them.

One day after I had become rather accomplished at diving to fetch puppies, I decided it was becoming too easy. I threw the puppies in the shallow end and decided that this time when I fetched them back to the surface I would have to do it with my teeth. It was suprisingly tricky. So it was that I dived over and over again to mash my face against the bottom of the swimming pool, mostly failing to collect puppies.

When I had finished swimming I had a huge graze spanning the length of my chin. It just so happened that I had a modelling audition the next day.

"Oh my goodness! What happened?" my mother cried when she saw me, to which I replied (rather inaccurately) that I didn't know. She pasted vast amounts of foundation over my chin the next day, until I looked like a child with a grazed chin covered in mother's make up.

I don't think I ever got to be in an ad either... I didn't act very well. One audition involved the director telling us to look really bored, because the parents have been fussing over some device that won't work for ages. One of the other children asked if we were allowed to roll our eyes. The director replied we could if we wanted to. Since I was very bored anyway, and it was the most interesting thing I could think of doing, I took this to be permission for me to stand there rolling my eyes back and forth, like they were on the end of a metronome. I didn't get picked.

Three Blind Men and an Elephant

It's raining outside. Great big, fat, happy drops from the sky are plopping into every puddle on every roof I see, sending spires of water reaching back to the heavens. It's been raining a lot lately.


As a physicist I think "what a gorgeous demonstration of Newton's third law this is; the impulse of the falling drops makes the puddle jump up when they hit."

As a chemist I think "water has a pleasing viscosity. I see that it quivers when disturbed due to hydrogen bonding."

As a biologist I think "I wonder what bacteria is living in those puddles at the moment."

As a poet I think "this is very... uh... metaphorical." (OK, so I'm not feeling poetic today, deal with it.)

As an artist I think "the shimmer of light across the waves on the puddles is beautiful."

As a juggler I think "this is shit. It's been bad juggling weather for ages."

As a survivalist I think "proof! The end is nigh. It's global warming that's doing this and pretty soon we will all die from it!"

As a pragmatist I think "it may take a while for my clothes to dry now."


What you do in life affects the way you think. By the way, I am none of the above.

Meeting Father Christmas

In a fit of boredom did I cry "But who will go out with me? This house is empty and dark. I am alone and lonely. I need a friend!"

Thus it was that my friend Alebanditos and I arranged at the very last minute and at great expense* to go to the pub. (Aunt, I promise it gets more interesting than that ;) )

It was there that we remembered the messages.

In our first year in university, Alebanditos and I (and others) lived together in an odd triangular arrangement which just about passed for accommodation. We were getting on with our lives** (possibly just trying to have a shower) when we discovered the first message clinging to a beam on the ceiling of the shower room.

"Harry is not the town," it said, "Gregory is the village."

And it was not the last. Behind a radiator, along the skirting, on the postbox, under a cupboard we found them. Up and down, left and right, in plain sight and yet hard to see. How we did stare and marvel at the sheer unlikeliness, and how very charmed we were by its romanticism! What an incredible victory it was to discover the next - just difficult enough to find that it was a most compelling scavenger hunt.

"Welcome to No Hope Disco."

I recounted with glee to Alebanditos the fun I had that someone should think so beautifully of life to hide us these broken poems, and what a sense of fulfilment I had as I found each one. I was like a disciple to some greater plan, where life was in every act and moment of being - boiling the kettle, getting the post, doing the washing up, going to the toilet, walking down the corridor - an adventure. And right there and then his stomach swelled to three times its original size. He grew old and grew a big white beard, and I noticed for the first time that he was wearing a hooded, bright red cloak and tough black boots.***

"Actually, that was me" he said with a shy smile. "It was my project. I was given a label maker as a parting gift from work, and I used it to hide messages around the house. I wanted to see how you would react." The second part of my reaction to his project is pending, as it has been ever since it first began. I wanted to leave behind a similar gift to those observant enough to see it and curious enough to appreciate it. Since going out with Alebanditos I have searched eBay for label makers.

"I found a gem on the dancefloor tonight."

I was going to write down all those precious scraps, but time has passed and I "never got round to it", so instead I remember just these three. It is a shame ( = something to be ashamed of). I never want to lose the gems I find on dancefloors ever again. I vow to write, and be happy.

The En- oh yeah, and then on the way back Alebanditos and I got stopped by the police. They informed us that he had just committed burglary.**** They then apologised for getting the wrong guy and drove off, and we proceeded on home.


* - Not actually true.
** - Not actually true.
*** - Not actually true.
**** - Not actually true.

The Crisp Dream

Last night I believe I dreamed a number of things, all blindingly ordinary. Just like that one Calvin and Hobbes...

I dreamed of the act of replying to electronic messages.

I dreamed that the Scrabble game in the lounge downstairs had been cleared away, so when I came downstairs this morning to find it still there I was momentarily startled.

I dreamed I happened to overhear some people in a historical discussion about the Cooper Temple Clause. No, not the band, the historical event, just like it existed in my head but not in real life. Thus it was that I learned the origins of the band's name.

That's just like Franz Ferdinand actually, isn't it? Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria gets assassinated, and thus World War I is instigated. So, almost a century later, we get a pulpy indie band adopting the name. Instead of a generation of youngsters going "Oh, just like the Archduke, who became the catalyst* of WWI!" we have a generation of youngsters in secondary school history classes going "Oh, just like the band!". I wonder which, in our life and times now, is the more significant meaning of "Franz Ferdinand".

But I digress! I had a series of very ordinary dreams, I was telling you. These do not, however, even scrape the two heavyweights of my past:

In 2nd place, the Doom Metal Dream:

[In real life] : A friend recommends that I buy a doom metal album. Wishing to keep an open taste in music, I accept his suggestion and purchase "Capture & Release" by Khanate. I see there are just two songs on the album, so I suppose they must both be rather long.
[In the dream]: I look at the CD case as see, why yes, they are long. They are about 40 minutes each.

In 1st place, the Crisp Dream:

[In real life] : I come home after a night out feeling rather peckish. I go to the kitchen, which is dark, and connected openly to the lounge area, where some flatmates are watching a movie. There is a multi pack bag of crisps on the counter, but not wanting to disturb my flatmates, I try to find a suitable flavour in the dark. The multi pack "theme" is meaty, so I think to myself that that is a shame, as it will not contain any Salt & Vinegar.
[In the dream] : I look at the packet and see that although it is the meaty variety, it does indeed contain Salt & Vinegar crisps.
[In real life, the next morning] : It is light and the crisps are now plainly visible. The multi pack does indeed contain Salt & Vinegar crisps.

I'm not really sure what to make of these overly-literal dreams.


Link of the day: Calvin & Hobbes

* - I have no idea why historians use the term "catalyst" to describe that which instigates an event. That is not what a catalyst is; it is that which aids and speeds up what is already happening. In chemistry, a catalyst lowers the activation energy for a chemical reaction, ensuring less energy is required to get the reaction started, and when it does happen, it happens faster.


Archduke Franz Ferdinand - "Oh, just like the band!"

Procrastination

It's rife. I may never work again.

Link of the day: Boomshine

Conversation

So I went to the Arts Centre today to have my lunch, and as I sat on one end of a capacious but mostly unoccupied couch a man approached.

"Do you mind if I sit on the other end?"

So he sat down, pulled out a monstrous ring-bound A4 manuscript and began at once to verbalise.

"You have to walk so much in England, I can't believe it!"

He flung his jumper down , revealing the other one he was wearing underneath it.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"Greece," he replied, "Greece, Athens. It is beautiful there, beautiful!"

I tell him I have never been.

"Oh, but you must, it's beautiful! At least once. When you go there you will want to go again."

He budged up a bit as his mother sat down next to him. A most random dialogue proceeded.

We talked about my degree, my subject and year of study, where I lived, his degree of study and where he lived. We talked about the huge manuscript he was consulting, his own thesis on Grecian politics and economics (as I remember roughly) and how it took him three and a half years to research it having to painstakingly arrange a series of personal interviews because it was not well documented. We talked about the weather, about how it was so much colder here than in Greece and the English were deluded to believe it was already hot. He asked about good restaurants. We talked about how the University had not changed much since he did his first degree here in 1998. Some nights in the Union now were the same as then, some are now different. We talked about how I love literature in spite of being a scientist, and how he can write about politics excellently but can't bear to read any of it because he is just so fed up after writing the thesis. We talked about certain futures and uncertain futures, and how both of us didn't know where we were going, but both knew it would be fine. His mother asked me a few of the same questions which he reiterated. When he fetched her a cappuccino and wandered off, she and I talked about how cappuccinos in the Arts Centre were not too good, and she laughed heartily about her over-sized spoon, declaring "This is only good for soup!!"

And then I left because I had to go to a lecture.

Nobody is nearly as open and honestly interested and nice to people around here, and indeed I think, in many parts of the world. The only person I know who can just do that so freely with people is my dad. I have been practising being able to converse with people in this manner, and I am indeed able to start many a random conversation with people on my course, but I can't do it completely freely anywhere with anyone yet.

I enjoyed my spontaneous conversation with these people. I think more of life's encounters should be like this. It's one way how ideas and friendships and futures are carved, and none of them can ever be completely inconsequential.