I recently spent some time deleting lots of old photos off my
phone to free up space on its microSD card. This turned out to
be futile on multiple points. For one thing, a solid 75% of all
photos I have taken with it are of my cat, and obviously I don't
delete *those*. For another, the thing's slow but steady slide
into complete unusability due to interminable delays in every single
action which each glances coyly at said microSD card apparently has
nothing to do with it being near full and everything to do with
a semi-recent update to Android doing something stupid with FUSE
which users can't undo, so close to a big waste of time all 'round.
I stipulate "close to" because while clearing things out I had the
pleasure of re-reading a bunch of book passages which I had bothered
to photograph while reading those books over the past year or two,
and that made it worthwhile. At the time I took the photos my
inner Luddite was probably grumbling that I should have been using
a highlighter to physically mark the pages, but in retrospect,
if I'd done that, I never would have revisited all those passages
again in a single sitting years later, so maybe this is actually
the better way. Anyway, I am reproducing them here for, hopefully,
your reading pleasure:
He walked on to the porch and stood still. He breathed in.
It was young air, still and undisturbed. He looked out at the
world - it was new and turning green. He raised his head. The
sky unfolded, pink from the sun rising somewhere unseen. He
raised his head higher. Spindle-shaped, porous clouds,
centuries of laborious workmanship, stretched across the whole
sky by only for a few moments before dispersing, seen only by
the few who happened to throw back their heads at that minute,
perhaps by Oleg Kostoglotov alone amongst the town's inhabitants.
Through the lace, the cut-out pattern, the froth and plumes of
these clouds sailed the shining, intricate vessel of the old moon,
still well visible."
(from Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward")
A "permanent disequilibrium" - there is no ideal state for this
process. There's never a golden moment in which we can sigh in
satisfaction and announce that "the world has been computerized"
or "the world has been geneticized". The process of technosocial
change just keeps recomplicating itself. It can never be "solved"
or "perfected". It has no final aim and no victory condition.
(from Bruce Sterling's
"Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years")
Technology forges on, not from any need of the species, but from
the need of certain of its more brilliant members for interesting
games to play.
(from Kenneth Brower's "The Starship and the Canoe")
There are men charged with the duty of examining the construction
of the plants, animals and soils which are the instruments of the
great orchestra. These men are called professors. Each selects
one instrument and spends his life taking it apart and describing
its strings and sounding boards. This process of dismemberment is
called research. The place for dismemberment is called a
university.
A professor may pluck the strings of his own instrument, but never
that of another, and if he listens for music he must never admit
it to his fellows or to his students. For all are restrained by an
ironbound taboo which decrees that the construction of instruments
is the domain of science, while the detection of harmony is the
domain of poets.
Professors serve science and science serves progress. It serves
progress so well that many of the more intricate instruments are
stepped upon and broken in the rush to spread progress to all
backward lands. One by one the parts are thus stricken from the
song of songs. If the professor is able to classify each
instrument before it is broken, he is well content.
