Computer as Extension of Self

It's confusing being in and of our tech-crazed society while also having watched it become so, as many of us have. While the obvious point to make is that we are all sucked into our "dream machines" all day long and that's weird and it's isolating us while simultaneously getting us too caught up in each other's minutiae, etc. But it's more than that. Back in the '70s computers were tools to help us with tasks we wanted to get done. They were impersonal like calculators.

Now computers are extensions of self. We may as well have our smartphones attached to our hands.

A smartphone is nothing without its partner in crime, the internet. Back in the mid-nineties when the internet was new, it was a safe haven for any nerd to find their tribe. It was a niche to squeeze yourself into while feeling the comfort of the tiny space you've hidden yourself in, like a cozy little warm cave blanket. Now everyone is there all of the time and it's saturated with all the yucky parts of humanity. Where are the cozy corners of the internet these days? Every time you find one (Instagram, Tumblr, etc) it gets expanded, invaded, and outfitted with fluorescent lighting.

In Felicia Day's memoir there's a chapter about #GamerGate which is a phenomenon I still don't totally understand, but it has something to do with boys being whiny about girls liking games, and by "whiny" I mean violent and abusive. Apparently when girls like something, it ruins it for boys. The kind of boys that think being a "man" means delineating yourself from women at all costs. Day brought up a really great point that anyone of my generation I think can understand: "What frightened me the most about my #GamerGate experience was the possibility that this could be the future of the internet. That the utopia I thought the online world created, where people don't have to be ashamed of what they love and could connect with each other regardless of what they looked like, was really a place where people could steep themselves in their own worldview until they become willfully blind to everyone else's."

Unfortunately, I think the internet as a whole HAS become a steeping, stewing, molding pot of brewing hatred-bile. It didn't used to be this way. There were always dangers specific to the internet, but the dangers of the budding baby internet were mostly relegated to meeting people in person you'd met first on the internet. Now the dangers lie in getting your address leaked to total strangers that have threatened to rape and kill you online because you expressed an opinion on Lana Del Rey that they don't share. The internet has evolved into a phenomenon that closely mirrors everyday life, except the internet is an everyday life that's a mean, and usually misogynist/racist/homophobic, drunk that has no filter.

There's something going on with our society. The ways in which it's been so fucked up for so long are surfacing. The dark and awful thoughts we used to mostly keep to ourselves are out on the internet which is now in our hands every waking moment. We don't give ourselves time to process our feelings and life events without posting them. We don't ask others how they are because we've seen their Facebook. We get angry if we have to tell others how we are that didn't see our Facebook. There's a weird and twisted new society being built online and we do NOT know the etiquette yet. We're all little baby barbarians that don't know how to behave.

Last night I watched a documentary on Steve Jobs that got real philosophical with the way this man changed our relationship to computers. I believe if he hadn't done it, someone else would have. Regardless, this relationship has evolved very quickly in our lifetimes and it's something we need to keep an eye on. We each have personal computers on us almost all the time. These items are tools that help us through the day. They compute. They are our cameras, notebooks, road maps, radios, sketchbooks, calculators, voice recorders, musical instruments, and links to the outside world.

Portable computing devices are marvels of modern technology that should be allowing us to create on a massive scale. We have the means to become the best versions of our creative selves with one device most of us own. But instead we're smearing each other online, scrolling through endless feeds of babies and pets, hunching over our "dream machines". The mirrors we are looking into all day every day are little slabs of glass and metal that have become hardware add-ons to our brains.

That could be fine if we used our mini computing devices to enhance our lives. Take pictures. Write novels. Draw things. Make music. Look up information. Read books. The marriage of internet and handheld computers is the best and worst thing to happen to technology in our lifetimes. It's changing humanity right now. We are in the process of becoming something else (the Borg? Oh God, are we the Borg?) because of how we live our lives attached to our "dream machines". We can become zombies with towels over our heads or we can choose to find a way through this love of devices back to seeing them as tools to make our lives easier and more creative.

Jobs was a man that wanted computers to be an extension of self, and we've benefitted from his vision, but it's important also to remember that that guy was an asshole. He couldn't connect to other humans. He named a computer after his daughter I think because he was trying to force himself to love his baby daughter as much as he already loved his computer.

Dude, I completely have this computer love. I've owned 6 smartphones in the last 6 years...the 6th one is on its way to me now and I have a tab on my computer open to track its journey to my hand. I've been seduced by the culture of computer-self to a heavy degree, but it's causing me a lot of cognitive dissonance these days. I'm old enough to remember the internet being new. I'm old enough to remember a childhood without cellphones. I'm old enough to remember a world before iPods. My life has occupied a space outside of the internet, but not computers. I don't remember a world before Jobs put the personal in front of the word computer. I don't remember not having a computer in my own home, though I never had one of my own until I got a laptop for school in 2006. I've only had my very own personal portal to the internet for the last 10 years. That's not so long in the scheme of a life. It's not too late for me to relearn how to use computing devices as tools to help me create. Tools to help me get tasks done. I've given these devices names and I would even say that I love them, but in the end they are metal and glass. Nothing can fill the space of true connection with nature, animals, and other humans. The internet can connect you to other humans, but remember to speak to them like humans...we are not just interacting with the machines we touch. They may feel like extensions of us but they reach all the way around the world. Remember that.

Hugs not thugs, children.

Dollhouse.

I'm rewatching "Dollhouse" right now and, as it always does, it's making me philosophize a whole bunch.

For the uninitiated, "Dollhouse" is a TV series that ran from 2009-2010 (only two seasons). Joss Whedon (creator of "Buffy" and "Firefly") was the showrunner. The show's premise was this: A person signs a contract for 5 years of their life to have their brains wiped in order to create a blank slate for other personas to be imprinted into their brains, for a price. A client can order any sort of person for any sort of job, then a "doll" is chosen to fulfill the client's order. When an Active (the doll) isn't on an "engagement" they are left in their brain-wiped state doing art, getting massages, doing yoga and generally kept in a calm and happy state. After their five year contract is up, the person's original personality is returned to them and they are left rich for life with no memory of what happened to them in that five years time. It's a pretty great show and yes it's on Netflix.

Now the questions start coming. Is this prostitution? Would you do this if all your financial burdens would be nonexistent afterwards? Would you be a bad person for ordering a doll? Would you order a doll but draw the line at having sex with them?

The show deals with all of these questions. It even gets into the complicated issues of the realness of the imprinted personalities. Sometimes an Active gets imprinted with a personality for a long-term engagement and doesn't want to give up the personality that feels real to them. Is that personality any more or less real than the one you were born with?

And then there's the societal questions. In the show someone figures out how to do a "remote wipe" wherein an Active can be returned to their blank doll state via a radio frequency. If someone can be wiped remotely like that, someone could create dolls en masse. Someone could create armies en masse. People would become nothing more than programmable computers.

The whole show is one big question: are human brains any different than computers?

Later on in the show, we're given a nightmare vision of a future where remote wipes are commonplace. Half of the population are wiped dolls. Another large percentage are trained to wipe the Actuals (anyone that still has their original personality). There's a group of vigilante dolls that carry imprints of different personalities they need to survive on flash drives they carry around their neck, ready to upload skills they need in any given moment they need it.

Another question is that of immortality. If you could back up your brain to be uploaded into another human being indefinitely, you could live forever. And would that be ok in a situation where someone has signed a contract to be a doll? You could just keep their body for the time of their contract and then move on to another. But people with money and power would exploit this.

Whatever good could be done with this kind of technology, it would ultimately go so VERY VERY wrong. People would be wiped without consent. People would be imprinted without consent.

One of the Actives in the show was forced to sign the contract to become a doll by a man she had rejected in life. He became one of her regular clients, imprinting her with the fantasy version of her original self so that he could have sex with her. That sounds like rape to me, yeah?

Is any sex with an Active rape? Presumably they signed up for this but they're not THERE, you know?

I don't know of any other television show that has made me have as many thoughts about morality and philosophy than this show. It's a shame it got canceled after two seasons. At times, the storyline is confusing and feels rushed.

The fact that the whole thing can also be seen as a metaphor for acting and how actors feel taking on personas for the entertainment of our society is not lost on me, either.

I feel like I'm poor enough that I would consider becoming a doll. But I would ultimately say no because I couldn't be assured that those in power would truly do everything in their power to keep me safe. In the show, the house is run by mostly good people truly looking out for their Actives, but in the real world you couldn't trust people in power. In real life, heroes probably just don't exist.

stop. making. sense. // a tattoo story

Last night I was asked if there's a story behind this tattoo. I'm TERRIBLE at telling stories, so this blog is an attempt to tell it better than I did almost 24 hours ago...

When I was a teenager I had a subscription to Alternative Press magazine. Back in the mid-to-late nineties, it covered music that was actually pretty good. They sent out sampler mix CDs every season during 1998. Man, that was so awesome. It was the only year they did it (while I was subscribing, anyway).

One day, I assume because of my subscription to AP, I received a simple postcard in the mail: black background and the word "STOP." in red typeface. Some time later (I think it was a week) I received a second postcard just like it with the word "MAKING."; "SENSE." followed another increment of time later.

I was fascinated. I taped the postcards together and put them on my bulletin board by the computer desk in the dining room. Those postcards moved with me, usually displayed by my desk, until weather took them away from me. I can't find images of them on the internet, but I swear I didn't make them up.

I sometimes have this ability to enjoy things for my own made up reasons without wondering why they were created. The back of the postcards must have explained that they were a promotional tool for a Talking Heads concert DVD being released (1999), but I don't remember wondering what the postcards were advertising. I didn't know it had anything to do with Talking Heads until many years later.

I like Talking Heads. They're my #34 artist according to my last.fm stats. I don't mind the few people that recognize my tattoo as a Talking Heads reference thinking that I got the tattoo because I'm a fan, but I didn't. I've never even seen the concert DVD!

The reasons I was enamored by the postcards and the reasons I got the words tattooed on my arm are entirely because of my personal conceptions of the words and the way they were delivered to my consciousness. I truly enjoyed the anticipation of waiting to "make sense" of what the postcards wanted to tell me. When the final postcard arrived and the idea that it wasn't supposed to make sense was revealed to me, I placed an ironic meaning into it. I kept those postcards as long as I could to remind me not to place meaning in life. No one I've ever talked about these postcards to remembers receiving them. It's the coolest piece of promotional advertisement I've ever seen, though obviously it didn't have the intended effect on me.

I got the tattoo because I no longer have the postcards. I got the meaningless tattoo to remind me of the ultimate meaning of life...that there is no meaning to life...except 42, of course. :)

So that's it. I like Talking Heads, but I like reminding myself not to take anything seriously more. I quite like being a meaningless speck in a gigantic and spectacular universe. There are a lot of us and some of us are pretty cool.

A couple of weeks ago I came up with a plan...

but have yet to implement it. Looking over my idea journal I carry with me everywhere, I find that this is all too often how I (don't) do things.

Anyway, the plan is this: once a week, probably Sunday, I will observe "Analog Day". Analog day will be a day of less smartphones, tablets, and internet. Specifically, the way I will define analog is by living that 24-hour period as if it is 2001. In 2001 I had the internet, but only on computers. In 2001 I had a cell phone, but could only make calls and text? I think I had texting capabilities, though people weren't really doing it a lot yet. With my limited verbal skills, texts would still have to exist on Analog Day. However, I don't want to use the fact that I'm "allowed" to text as an excuse to be preoccupied with texting all day...sooooo generally this day will be a day that I go out and enjoy the world outside, leaving my phone at home.

In 2001 I often left my phone at home. In 2014 I'm worried I have it at my side too often. I check it for mundane bits of information too frequently.

Our digital surroundings can easily become a crutch when you use them instead of doing more creative things. Creativity is usually more analog than digital. Writing in a blog could have been done in 2001, for example, while checking Facebook could not. Reading a book in a waiting room could have been done in 2001, while playing Bejeweled on your phone could not...not the Nokia I had, anyway.

2014 is the year that I have read the least in my entire adult life, I think. It could be an incorrect assumption, but I fear this is mostly due to a shortened attention span caused by a click-fast culture of checking statuses of things (weather, texts, emails, facebook, etc). Too much of my time spent online is re-upping information that doesn't mean anything. Have I checked Instagram today? What about Tumblr? While some sites genuinely engage me (Tumblr, Forever Young Adult, Jezebel), most provide bland scrolling and mindless entertainment (Facebook, Instagram). Where are these distractions pulling my life? I think the answer is sideways or down or nowhere at all. I feel that books and blogs and radio stations and going outside take me much further into a future of attention, intelligence, and meaning.

However, I don't at all condemn our new shiny objects of distraction. I love the world at my fingertips, but I would like to learn that I don't have to access that world every time I use my fingertips. It took me awhile to learn that having a cell phone, even if I have it on me at all times, didn't mean I had to be accessible to everyone all the time. Now, only 4 years after purchasing my first smartphone, I've found it is my time to learn that although the world's information is almost always available to me, it doesn't mean I need to access  it all the time. 

This brings me to my mild disdain (ok, maybe it's more like a medium simmering disdain) for Facebook. On the one hand, I am completely all for everyone being in the same space online and being able to organize my entire social life from one location. On the hand that I'm more often holding, I recognize that posting statuses on Facebook has become a placeholder for real interactions with others. When I talk to friends and family, I would like to know how they're feeling about their lives. Often when I have "catch-up" conversations, they are punctuated by, "Didn't you see my Facebook status?" or even conversations continuing from online "conversations" that were simply a friend or family member posting a status. For example, someone in my immediate family is currently in the process of moving. It didn't occur to anyone in my family to tell me about this event, because it was on Facebook. I think the next step in socialization now that so much of it has migrated online, is simply to remember that not everyone sees everything you post on Facebook.

I'd like to clarify that I don't mean conversations you've had with me online can't migrate to in person. They absolutely can and SHOULD. I love conversation through any medium and across all platforms. What I mean is when a person assumes an online status update is like a telepathic transmission to all "Facebook friends". It isn't. Maybe I don't use Facebook the way regular people use Facebook...which makes sense because I don't socialize the way others socialize. Namely, I cannot withstand the stimulation of knowing what everyone is doing at all times. To keep up with a couple hundred friends on a website would take all my energy from me, so be kind and don't assume we all know what you're doing because you posted pictures of your son's wedding in Albuquerque. Chances are, I didn't see those pictures.

I realize this is all a new venue of etiquette we as a society don't yet know how to navigate. I dislike being interrupted with "Yeah, I saw that on Facebook" when I'm talking about what's going on with me as much as I dislike others answering "How are you?" with..."You didn't see my Facebook?" Much of what I mean when I ask someone how they are is how are you right NOW? How do you feel today? What are you excited about? How are you coping with your life at this moment in time in front of me right now? What are you into, man?

Odd for me of all people to be requesting a more traditional style of socialization. Me of the only-text-never-answer-phone-calls fame. Me of the "I prefer to socialize online" battle cry.

I think I just figured out what I dislike about it! Back in the '90s, online communication was one-on-one or chat rooms of a few people in real time or via direct communication like email. Now it's more indirect megaphone-style life updates. What I really want is to actually talk/type to people I like.

Anyway, Analog Day. I'm doing it...starting next Sunday.

I Never Had to Take the Red Pill.

Or, When I Stop Babbling, Maybe I'll Have a Point.

Today I've been struggling with NOT making a purchase. I told myself I wouldn't buy any new electronics in the year 2014 and today I almost bought a Gameboy Advance SP. I was in full on internet-purchase-porn mode. I was following several auctions on ebay, I had gone to Vintage Stock to see if they had the color I wanted (pink...why it gotta be pink?). I did a cost analysis in my journal. I was about to pull the trigger. Fortunately, my phone needed to be charged and was all the way across the room. A break from the purchase-porn lead to the analog journal-writing. Writing was the breath I had to take away from an obsession that is, quite frankly, ridiculous. The device I want (below) fulfills my completest need to have ALL the Mario Kart gameplay capability. I was essentially almost willing to buy an entire device for the capacity to play ONE game (Mario Kart on the Gameboy Advance--a game I recently lost the ability to play when Michael gave me his 3DS and I put my regular DS on ebay). ONE game I only play every few months. Because I have this NEED to be able to play all Mario Kart games.

Even now, I look at the picture of this device and I'm swooning. I want to hold it and push the buttons. 

I made it through the day...the kind of day I normally don't survive without that oh-so-(briefly)satisfying purchase click. My resistance of temptation is deeper than denying myself something I want. Grocery money is more important than electronic devices, and that is a factor, but it's deeper than that too. 

Some years ago I alighted on a theory of placing my time in one of two categories: consumption versus creation. For a time I was vigilant about pushing myself to more moments of creation (writing, art, moving, etc) in my life. I've become quite lax this year. I've spent time away from my blog. I've not been reading. I've not been listening to new music. I've not been writing for "The Current, Etc". I've skipped two weeks of YouTube-posting. 

I've reveled, even luxuriated, in much of the laying about listlessly, but as Tank Girl says, "It's been swell, but the swelling's gone down." 

At the beginning of May, I had some mouth surgery (mucosele removal--look it up, if you've interest). At the time I assumed it would take a couple of days to heal and then that'd be it, but I spent nearly a month in pain, my mouth restricted. I couldn't smile. I couldn't laugh. Eating was difficult. Talking was difficult. A section of my bottom lip is STILL numb, over a month later! The circumstance of not being able to laugh and smile affected my mood significantly. I smile and laugh almost constantly in my life. It's a coping mechanism, but it's also a result of my awe at life.

Today I took a long walk at sunset and listened to a podcast interview with RuPaul. As obsessed as I am with Ru's show, I've never been a huge fan of RuPaul the entity. Glamour queens aren't really my bag. That said, this interview was very thought-provoking (WTF podcast with Marc Maron). Listening to Ru's life experiences and thought processes throughout, I realized that "glamazon" is simply Ru's most recent visual persona...it's the one that made her famous, but she's done New Wave, she's done Genderfuck, she's been punk rock...

At some point during her narrative, she spoke about wanting to "find her tribe". She remembers always seeing "the Matrix", society, as the construct that it is. It confused her that the majority of people were seemingly so into the "normal" thing. 

This is something I have always struggled with. I have always questioned everything. I haven't been able to accept at face value what others seem to so naturally fall into. I've not often done what is expected of me, and in some ways this is attributed to simply being wired differently, but most of the time what others see as rebellion is simply me trying to pick apart why a thing is so often done in one carved-out way by so many people. I've mostly embraced my otherness, but a time in my '20s I really caved and tried to conform. Hearing Ru explain this concept as just not buying into "the Matrix" is so what I've been wanting to express for my entire life. 

I don't have time to placate those that never bucked the system. I've been searching for my "tribe" throughout my life as well. Even in "alternative" cultures (goth, punk, piercers, etc) there is a way that you're expected to act. When I was training to be a piercer, I got a lecture from one of my superiors for self-mutilation, a phase that for me was never about self hatred, but testing limits and learning about myself. I was also told that I would have to get tattoos and a certain number of piercings to do the job. At the time I wasn't ready to commit to tattoos and I CERTAINLY wasn't going to get any piercings I didn't want. I was also told that choosing not to pierce someone's genitals wasn't an option. Going in, I expected the body modification culture to accept free-thinking. To be a piercer, I thought that meant I was going to learn to safely pierce people's bodies in exchange for money...but to the community at large, to be a piercer meant that I had to conform to a certain way of life. I found a lot of negativity and got out after performing one piercing (my mom's nose, still pierced today).

As an adult, I experience the audacity of people trying to tell me how to behave just as often as I did as a child. Just last night my aunt started a familiar diatribe with me about walking alone at night. It is presented as if I am taking my fucking life into my hands every time I'm alone in the world without a MAN to protect me! It infuriates me. The only way we subvert rape culture is by not tolerating it. I'm not going to sacrifice my freedom in exchange for "safety". I drive a car, though I know I could be fatally wounded at any moment. 

I refuse to live my life in fear of men. 

It's not my fault if someone rapes me, but it is my fault if I continually deny myself one of life's pleasures (walking/dancing at night outside) out of fear. 

Another example of "the Matrix"/other people trying to control my body. I asked a local tattooist to put ink on my body a couple of years ago and he refused to do the tattoo because he felt it would look "like fucking shit". That part didn't bother me. What bothered me was his other assertion, that I could not get the tattoo in the orientation (words facing me on my forearm) I wanted, because that isn't how "it's done". You simply MUST get the words facing your hand, not your elbow. The next time he saw me, he grabbed my arm to "make sure" I hadn't gotten the tattoo from someone else; at the time I hadn't, as it was later that night. The fact that he was unwilling to perform the tattoo was his right as an artist and I am grateful that he didn't perform a tattoo he didn't feel comfortable with, but that he thought his opinions on MY choice of art warranted a demand to see that I hadn't "gotten the tattoo anyway" was what pissed me off. I eventually got the tattoo the way I wanted it and I'm very happy with it. It's my body, I'll do what I want with it. Fuck you if you're trying to control how someone else conducts themselves, if they're not hurting anyone.

"The Matrix" is all about control. Control, as long as someone isn't taking away the personal choices of others, should only be self-imposed. 

All this blather is to say that I'm currently in this evolution of becoming the cunt I want to be, nay the cunt I always have been. I was born questioning and I will never stop picking apart the perceptions of myself and those around me. I'm interested in how you (yes, YOU) see the world, as long as you're not regurgitating the way someone else wants you to see it. I'm confrontational about my weirdness. I want to get in your face and make you question why you think the things that everyone has told you to think. I don't have an eloquent way of getting my point across. Sometimes I try to convince a random dude at a bar that I'm a drag queen in order to get him to question gender. I suppose in the end, he did. He questioned MY gender by grabbing my crotch and breasts while demanding to "see your junk". Why is a response to women so often taking ownership of their bodies and choices? I'm fucking done being NICE for a sake of keeping waters still. I've never fit in the box and while it may not seem that I've ever tried, I have. All these years you've seen me attempting to be "normal". Get ready for a new Mixtress. I'm embracing anger for the sake of living. Oh, and I'm still getting that "cunt" tattoo.

But I'm not buying any devices....not on tonaiiiiight.

The Matrix (1999)

I never noticed Cypher was betraying them from the beginning until this watching. I really don't pay that much attention to movies, apparently. I usually just sit back and enjoy the pretty words/pictures. It's going to be difficult for me to give this movie any less than tens across the board because every shot is meticulously beautiful. The only complaint I have is that it's a typical hero/Christ story and that the "One" is male. If Joss Whedon had written the screenplay with the Wachowskis, this movie would be fucking unstoppable.

Agent Smith is perfect. How is Hugo Weaving not the biggest star ever? I mean, he lipsyncs better than most drag queens I've seen in person, has the vocal cadence of I don't know--God?, and the versatility of a contortionist. He's pretty much my favorite character in these movies. Ugh, I hate Morpheus, though. He's soooo tiresome. Fucking believers, man! What's their deal? And he's SUCH a drama queen. He's so patronizing and cryptic and self-righteous. Of course, I didn't feel this at first before I knew what was going on with this movie. So, ok, obviously, he's the audience surrogate and I need to let him do his dramatic thing and shut up about it already.

I think the pills are really just DayQuil and NyQuil. I've always loved the idea of questioning reality. I'm very much a pluralist in the way that I believe that we are only as good as our perceptions and our perceptions cannot...wait, I have to watch Neo unplug...our perceptions cannot be assured as reality. We can never see through someone else's eyes, truly. That's the true true. Sorry, I know...

So, was the pill just a symbol? No, it made him hallucinate...ok, so it loosened his perceptions of what he thought of as "reality". I wonder if fat people in the Matrix are really just people with bad self-esteem, because if everyone is really just a "battery" no one would be overweight. So, is no one overweight IN the Matrix?

Morpheus: Your appearance now is what we call residual self-image: the mental projection of your digital self.

God, I love that line! What would be the mental projection of YOUR digital self?

I don't really mind the doofus-ness of Keanu Reeves. Never have. Yes, I find him attractive. He's pale, skinny and dark-haired. That's my type. But, I don't mind his daftness simply because some of us are like this, but aren't actually daft. I choose to believe Keanu is this type.

Ok, so essentially Morpheus speaks in zen koans. I suppose I see his purpose, but I still respect a direct-talker.

I heart the Oracle! So, when the Oracle tells Neo he isn't the one, that he has "the gift, but it looks like you're waiting for something" this supports my theory that everyone is "The One", we just haven't, most of us, self-actualized yet. I hope that was an intended message by the Wachowskis, because I like it!

How many times have you handed someone a cookie and said those famous "right as rain" words? I've said it dozens! Ok, I'm calling it. Scores below. It's almost midnight and this might be the only "winter" night we have this year (if last winter is any indication) so I'm going to cuddle up without the computer for the movie's last half hour.


replayability: 8
music: 10
character average: 7.3
atmosphere: 8
dialogue: 7

TOTAL: 40.33