FA+
Shop
The information age Intellectual.
11 years ago
General
From the comfort of my room, I have come to learn that I know nothing. The history of philosophy to me is a curated resource, the greatest thoughts of the greatest men mere seconds from rasterization upon the thin film of transistor driven crystals that make up the screen before me. The screen in my pocket. The screen on my coffee table.
In my day to day life the fruits of an entire history worth of theoretic physics made practical is exercised with the same precision of a master craftsmen to augment and refine my own mind. I tangentially invoke quantum fluctuations, very simple logical circuits working in indefinably complex ways to do something as simple as fill an allocated gray rectangle with the text, icons, menus and boarders of my word processor. My understanding of the process only seems to make it more wondrous to me.
The religion of the theologian is not so mysterious or unapproachable. The enlightenment of zen is a concept I can grok. Through the ever expanding worldwide network, my consciousness is transmitted. My consciousness is received. It mingles with the alien. It argues to find some sort of greater truth. Every day it is remade anew. The breadth and quality of experience is no longer dependent on locale in the traditional since and the platitudes of the 80s conceptualization of cyberspace ring as quaint anachronisms to my understanding of the virtual world. There is no space here. It is a singularity of knowledge.
The physical separation of servers and networking equipment is tangential. The addresses in URLs are a hanger on. The entire domain hierarchy exists for the convenience of a system that is rarely used. Information has become truly contextual and we treat it as such. Ours is an age of functional ambiguity.
One only needs to go as far as TV tropes to understand the essence of the era. We scrutinize with a zeal unrivaled by any in our history the exponential products of culture with a kind of back-handed earnestness that drives us to dismiss that which we can categorize. Knowledge is a tool that has historically tended twords misuse. Perhaps it is therefore the fate of our generation to know so much and think so little.
It is fascinating that we are practically inundated in this culture with the factoid that the STEM fields, being Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics, are the only ones worth pursuing. I find it hard to believe that we are raising a generation of scientists when curiosity is so demonized. It is one of those little niggles. Another bit of functional ambiguity that seems to be the zeitgeist of our generation. Our culture values information, but not critical thinking. We'd rather leave progress to the machine.
At the same time, there has never been a period of time where so many people had access to so much. The online culture is rich, our conversations can draw on the collective works of every major civilization with as much if not more fluidity than the layman can his Bible. The operative word here being can. In the increased exposure to humanity, I find both my since of brotherhood and cynicism engaged with equal intensity.
At times I feel we are truly beyond our pregenital development as a culture, but for every moment of serenity within my ivory tower of blinking lights there is a sobering reverberation of that vicious id. Is it more visible to me because of this mass of copper and glass? To excuse myself an irreverent turn of phrase: the greatest injustice of racial guilt is that those who feel it do not need it and those who do not feel it need it all the more.
It truly pains my heart to hear my parents speak on race. I wonder if it is because of their palpable obliviousness to their own biases that I sought out my own, for our outlooks could not be more different. It is a vicious thing that they have done in their self-delusion. They deny the problem while making light of it. I feel some small sense of hypocritical progress at the very least when I quite truthfully say that I now make light of the problem in full awareness of its breadth.
Ours is a generation of jokers. The enlightened buffoon is perhaps the most engaging. I can not tell if this is because of our apathy or because of the truly terrifying state of our situation. How is it that we are being duped into inheriting the lowest common ideal of our ancestors? Of their compromises and failures both? Sometimes I wonder if the only thing that kept the science fiction writers from being true prophets was their underestimation of the influence of the past.
I yearn for yearning. In my ennui I sometimes look with some degree of ignorance at the social revolutions taking place at the edges of my consciousness. A degree of jealousy hits me, a want for similarly meaningful change in my own culture. It is with the scant few that I share and engage on the points of discontentment with the establishment. It is a scattered counterculture. A virtual upheaval. Our revolution is not televised, but it does make the news site comment section.
I don't know if people understand that phrase anymore. We had Occupy, I even attended a few rally against the automated collection of telephone 'metadata' myself. We wrested control of media from the media corporations and occasionally it did something, but for the most part we have become content with out ability to watch. To interact safely from afar.
I hate that word. Safe. The great curse of this information age is the safety it allows. I can explore the most breathtaking views in the world with this tiny glowing screen. I need not ever touch a single stone or huff a single pained breath. The greatest risk is my life is that I will be too curious. That for some fucked up reason my meandering intellectualisms will bring me into the consciousness of the institutions I dare to criticize. I'm too small for that to be anything real, but I'm not small enough not to be touched by it.
People go dark. Bits of this expanded existence are wrested from me because of the machinations of systematic oppression. The people on the other end die. Friends become overcome with pointlessness and make theirs one less point in the sea of desperation. These are my martyrs. They make up the memory of the lost cause I champion, even if that cause has no name.
I study Dao. Another one of those functional ambiguities. The concept of just being resonates with me, but the realization that the very fact that I /study/ Dao makes me unable to find the Way of things hits me with the same sort of tragicomedy that I so enjoy in film.
So, it is equally surprising to me that I can occasionally just be. To smile despite it all. To forget the desperation of my mind for meaning, the suffering in the word and just enjoy a moment with friends. That I can find fascination in art, despite the culture glorifying STEM. That I can find awe in scientific discovery, despite the entire history of the enterprise being at the tips of my fingers.
Perhaps functional ambiguity isn't so bad.
In my day to day life the fruits of an entire history worth of theoretic physics made practical is exercised with the same precision of a master craftsmen to augment and refine my own mind. I tangentially invoke quantum fluctuations, very simple logical circuits working in indefinably complex ways to do something as simple as fill an allocated gray rectangle with the text, icons, menus and boarders of my word processor. My understanding of the process only seems to make it more wondrous to me.
The religion of the theologian is not so mysterious or unapproachable. The enlightenment of zen is a concept I can grok. Through the ever expanding worldwide network, my consciousness is transmitted. My consciousness is received. It mingles with the alien. It argues to find some sort of greater truth. Every day it is remade anew. The breadth and quality of experience is no longer dependent on locale in the traditional since and the platitudes of the 80s conceptualization of cyberspace ring as quaint anachronisms to my understanding of the virtual world. There is no space here. It is a singularity of knowledge.
The physical separation of servers and networking equipment is tangential. The addresses in URLs are a hanger on. The entire domain hierarchy exists for the convenience of a system that is rarely used. Information has become truly contextual and we treat it as such. Ours is an age of functional ambiguity.
One only needs to go as far as TV tropes to understand the essence of the era. We scrutinize with a zeal unrivaled by any in our history the exponential products of culture with a kind of back-handed earnestness that drives us to dismiss that which we can categorize. Knowledge is a tool that has historically tended twords misuse. Perhaps it is therefore the fate of our generation to know so much and think so little.
It is fascinating that we are practically inundated in this culture with the factoid that the STEM fields, being Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics, are the only ones worth pursuing. I find it hard to believe that we are raising a generation of scientists when curiosity is so demonized. It is one of those little niggles. Another bit of functional ambiguity that seems to be the zeitgeist of our generation. Our culture values information, but not critical thinking. We'd rather leave progress to the machine.
At the same time, there has never been a period of time where so many people had access to so much. The online culture is rich, our conversations can draw on the collective works of every major civilization with as much if not more fluidity than the layman can his Bible. The operative word here being can. In the increased exposure to humanity, I find both my since of brotherhood and cynicism engaged with equal intensity.
At times I feel we are truly beyond our pregenital development as a culture, but for every moment of serenity within my ivory tower of blinking lights there is a sobering reverberation of that vicious id. Is it more visible to me because of this mass of copper and glass? To excuse myself an irreverent turn of phrase: the greatest injustice of racial guilt is that those who feel it do not need it and those who do not feel it need it all the more.
It truly pains my heart to hear my parents speak on race. I wonder if it is because of their palpable obliviousness to their own biases that I sought out my own, for our outlooks could not be more different. It is a vicious thing that they have done in their self-delusion. They deny the problem while making light of it. I feel some small sense of hypocritical progress at the very least when I quite truthfully say that I now make light of the problem in full awareness of its breadth.
Ours is a generation of jokers. The enlightened buffoon is perhaps the most engaging. I can not tell if this is because of our apathy or because of the truly terrifying state of our situation. How is it that we are being duped into inheriting the lowest common ideal of our ancestors? Of their compromises and failures both? Sometimes I wonder if the only thing that kept the science fiction writers from being true prophets was their underestimation of the influence of the past.
I yearn for yearning. In my ennui I sometimes look with some degree of ignorance at the social revolutions taking place at the edges of my consciousness. A degree of jealousy hits me, a want for similarly meaningful change in my own culture. It is with the scant few that I share and engage on the points of discontentment with the establishment. It is a scattered counterculture. A virtual upheaval. Our revolution is not televised, but it does make the news site comment section.
I don't know if people understand that phrase anymore. We had Occupy, I even attended a few rally against the automated collection of telephone 'metadata' myself. We wrested control of media from the media corporations and occasionally it did something, but for the most part we have become content with out ability to watch. To interact safely from afar.
I hate that word. Safe. The great curse of this information age is the safety it allows. I can explore the most breathtaking views in the world with this tiny glowing screen. I need not ever touch a single stone or huff a single pained breath. The greatest risk is my life is that I will be too curious. That for some fucked up reason my meandering intellectualisms will bring me into the consciousness of the institutions I dare to criticize. I'm too small for that to be anything real, but I'm not small enough not to be touched by it.
People go dark. Bits of this expanded existence are wrested from me because of the machinations of systematic oppression. The people on the other end die. Friends become overcome with pointlessness and make theirs one less point in the sea of desperation. These are my martyrs. They make up the memory of the lost cause I champion, even if that cause has no name.
I study Dao. Another one of those functional ambiguities. The concept of just being resonates with me, but the realization that the very fact that I /study/ Dao makes me unable to find the Way of things hits me with the same sort of tragicomedy that I so enjoy in film.
So, it is equally surprising to me that I can occasionally just be. To smile despite it all. To forget the desperation of my mind for meaning, the suffering in the word and just enjoy a moment with friends. That I can find fascination in art, despite the culture glorifying STEM. That I can find awe in scientific discovery, despite the entire history of the enterprise being at the tips of my fingers.
Perhaps functional ambiguity isn't so bad.
