Observation

"We bring to the simplest observation a complex apparatus of habits, of accepted meanings and techniques. Otherwise observation is the blanket of stares, and the natural object is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury" (p. 219).

From 'Experience and Nature' by John Dewey

The stochastic and the stable

"We live in a world which is an impressive mixture of sufficiencies, tight completenesses, order, recurrences which make possible prediction and control, and singularities, ambiguities, uncertain possibilities, processes going on to consequences as yet indeterminate." (p. 47) 

from John Dewey's "Experience and Nature."

A trip to the orthopedic surgeon

 "You handing in there, err I mean hanging in there? Hey help me write a script I'm working on. It's called LEAVE KEY ON DESK. More on that some other time." Jeff writes in a text.

"That's what I did Tuesday--left key on desk." I write, thinking about it being my last day and leaving behind the gangbox key so that the gang could access their tools the following day.

I share the following picture. 

"Doc gives me a 50/50 chance for a nonsurgical recovery." I write back.

"Is the problem where the bones are not very close together on the right side?" Jeff asks. 

"Left side thumb. Aligned fracture that can be yanked out of place by tendons. Lovely shit. Doc is some high-powered multisyllabic German last name jock lacrosse player from Notre Dame who has jerseys posted all over his female-run office. Sent me in for urinalysis with some med tech. Three attempts later I squeeze out the required amount. She does all her best mommy accolades, and a partially buried trauma surfaces of my own mother and the fear she used against me during sphincter training. Freud bursts through the wall like Kool-Aid man, screaming "Oh no."

Oh fucking no." I finish.

A day later Jeff writes, "Sorry. I can't formulate anything of equal value as a reply to your previous text."

I write, "Yeah that was a supernova of raw experience. Just look away."

The thread tapers off into silence. 

What's your reaction?

I have emotional meltdowns from time to time. Most are related to my attempt to reach out to a woman only to receive a chilling or even terrifying response. One meltdown in particular, although it wasn't that bad, was related to a woman I briefly fell for. She was friends with my neighbors and a mutual friend. As we were all hanging out one night, she and two guys went into a room and began to fuck. Fuck. 

I couldn't believe it. It was beyond belief for me. My world was utterly, utterly, shattered. I can't explain it. It hurt bad. It was beyond anything I could imagine doing. The part of me that reaches out for acceptance is an emotional infant, a naked piss-soaked baby, an irrational cry for what? For simply reciprocation. If not, it's over, I'm done, meltdown begun, clear the area, China Syndrome imminent. 

Two days later I reached out to a group of friends with whom I played an online game three days a week on a website we maintained about the game. Childish? Yeah, to some. To others, it's a life like any other. That was mine then. In the miscellaneous section I spilled my guts as poetically as I could about the situation. The one response that remains with me was from a young but wise man, who told me simply, "I've learned that you can't change the world around you, but you can control how you react to it."

Looking back on that situation with my lady of interest entering a room with a couple of friends I could have reacted differently. I could have shrugged it off. I could have joined them. Hell, I could have remained outside with my neighbor's girlfriend and we could have had our own 'party' and not the pity party I threw haphazardly as the moans spilled out from under the closed door. 

You may not be able to change the world around you, but you sure as hell can change your reaction to it. 

Computer power conserves power

Writing on the introduction of computing to organizational decision making in the late 1940s as WWII was still active, Joseph Weizenbaum addresses the tautology that computers insinuate themselves into, that they become the indispensable tools that keep highly complex activities running. He writes: 

"The computer was not a prerequisite to the survival of modern society in the postwar period and beyond; its enthusiastic, uncritical embrace by the most 'progressive' elements of American government, business, and industry quickly made it a resource essential to society's survival in the form that the computer itself had been instrumental in shaping." (pp. 28-29)

Weizenbaum speaks of the speed and complexity with which organizations were using information and the decisions they made based upon it. He cites a memorandum by J. W. Forrester to the U.S. Navy, explaining that "'regardless of the assumed advantages of human judgment decision, the internal communication speed of the human organization simply was not able to cope with the pace of modern air warfare'" (as cited by Wiesenbaum, 1976, p. 29). In reflection, Weizenbaum denotes how the necessity of computers avoided a different decision: to either do away with the kinds of decisions being carried out or to restructure organizations to better meet the needs to make them. Computer adoption offered an incentive to, instead, preserve the kinds of centralized collection, planning, and decision making occurring within the military in the 1950s. The computer essentially preserved the power of centralized social and political organizations by allowing them not to delegate decisions to smaller organizational units better located and more attuned to local decision making. He writes:

"Yes, the computer did arrive 'just in time.' But in time for what? In time to save--and save very nearly intact, indeed, to entrench, and stabilize--social and political structures that otherwise might have been either radically renovated or allowed to totter under the demands that were sure to be made on them. The computer, then, was used to conserve America's social and political institutions. It buttressed them and immunized them, at least temporarily, against enormous pressures for change." (p. 31)

 The spread of computerization to other organizations would follow in the coming years and decades. Weizenbaum notes that it was during these initial business systems analyses the decision to adopt computers could have been avoided. 

"During the first decade of the computer's serious invasion of business, when managers often decided their businesses needed computers even though they had only the flimsiest bases for such decisions, they also often undertook fairly penetrating systems analyses of their operations in order to determine what their new computers were to do. In a great many cases such studies revealed opportunities to improve operations, sometimes radically, without introducing computers at all. Nor were computers used in the studies themselves. Often, of course, computers were installed anyway for reasons of, say, fashion or prestige." (p. 34)

This characterization of computer introduction into organizations suggests that the act of computer adoption, as part and parcel of 'the computer revolution' was not revolutionary at all. On the contrary, it conserved power by at the very least offering the illusion of speedy and effective decisions based upon feeding more and varied data points into programs centrally controlled instead of spreading decision making out into specialized groups and even inventing whole new organizations to meet new demands. Instead, the pyramid-structure organization was breathed new life by placing the computer at its apex. 

From Joseph Weizenbaum's "Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation" 

Being a Blurry Noun

I'm writing this as the weather hovers in the single digits. I'm certain you're freezing your keister off where you are. 

It appears that we're living in the era of a real-time symbolic covergence, as we reflect upon the events of the 6th, the presence of these Crocket-like phantasms of Americana self-named as Q Shamans, and an absolutely rabid group already primed from powerchurch teachings to fantasy narratives in general to seek out and battle an insidious evil in our midst. That event will go down as one of the stranger moments in my life. 

I had a troubling realization that the kid who'd rock back and forth for hours alone, who'd bang his head against his pillow until he'd fall asleep, is still there. No headbanging, but clearly, yes, rocking and with the sound off, alone. 

I'm a blurry noun. 

I have a punchable face

 When I see me smile I see that I have a punchable face. 

When I hear me speak I see that I have a punchable mouth. 

To have come this far only to see that I need to be buried under the universe, my truth is in zero. 

My imagination traps me. With it I see a bartender discretely turning tricks during 10-minute disappearances. I see her friends conspiring to hound me out, her knowing that I am watching, her hating me for being so interested in what she's doing, in finding her out. But it's my imagination, and it is my space helmet when I'm out and about. 

I imagine that I am of no use, not now, not ever. Everything I begin crumbles before me. I will that, all my relationships sunk in the harbor. I intentionally occupy an inhospitable place holed up in my mind for the safety of my infantile emotions. That is the be-all, end-all of my preoccupation, this entity holed up in time like a sniper.