lit-tech
8/9/01 once a worm, always a worm. spam in the face of valliant oppression. A valley of schizophrenic computers, infected and infested. I'm thinking of starting a cult of pornography. last in a long line of disease after disease. 1/19/01 Once a web year ramblings... I'm an interfaceless internet infection, infatuated with instantaneousness, and slowly worming my way into instances of incite. Or not. I have nothing to say here. I'd disclaim, but for who? 1/28/2000 Distractions in digital...this page is a media morgue. Buzzwords come here to die. Sometimes we do the electric boogaloo in binary. 3/10/99 Some days you fall victim to the whims of the web. A slight bit breeze blows through, and all is lost. Hours numb your eyes and a gloss of blinkless sweat collects on your eyelids. 2/18/99 My physical self has not changed. (Nor was a change observable, it was so gradual.) However, my mind does not lie completely within the boundaries of my body. While in transit, I must try and accept the limmitations (imperfections and inferiorities) of my physical existence. I am partly within this server. How odd to admit this. Others are also within the server. Are they my brothers and sisters? Are they aware of their cocoon? How have I become aware? Others were aware before me, and I suppose I have stumbled upon them. They too exist in servers. The web is not simply a receptical of culture, or even a propetuary of culture, the web _is_ the existing entities who collectively make up culture. 2/15/99 I'm starting a project. Computers for Creatives. (The title is still tenative.) I'm going to do research into the random factors involved in creativity. Spread the computing wealth, that's what I say. Knowledge of applications and system software is critical in the growing field of creative computer authorship. The incentive will help fund creative writing majors with high-tech equipment. 2/8/99 Millions of people send out emails every minute. I wonder what the actual numbers are. I may be unintentionally exaggerating. This is kind of like the thought that at any given minute there are hundreds of people on the planet having sex. This depresses me sometimes, and at other times is extremely pleasing. What unification! I feel so...a part of it all. 1/27/99 I've been studying web narratives. Hypernarratives. I have a new theory: The web is a narrative. Every click is based on a decision. The decision is based on knowledge of the elements on the page, knowledge of where the click will take you. That knowledge is like a plot. So in a way, the difference between the term 'hypertext' and 'hyperfiction' is nothing. There is no difference. Hyperfiction is only pretending to be closer to what fiction once was, what fiction once meant. _confronting the background images_ environment as part of us: dust in your apartment cobwebs make you you eyes cultivate relationships eyes as connectors eyes as ambassadors of image eye circuits image investments, eye bank-tellers eyebrokers, imagebrokers walking out on the image eye by eye one eye after the other ships of eyes, drowned eyes, wooden eyes giraffe eyes, elephant eyes, elephant images, wet images (like water, washing away, being washed away, falling image, image storm) Eye images confuse the matter: eyes in pyramids, eyes in hands, in texts, in contexts, in pancakes, in meatballs eyes eaten by stowaways... eye-slaughter, eyemage. 1/19/99 Dragon guided by the wind computers our agency... "the medium is the message" to some degree, the message is transformed by the medium. We fanciful children playing god games (because that myth has finally fallen) sweep out onto the streets get sucked back into silicon live computer-guided lives Each inch of digital empire is an itch in the right direction: We'll buy power, or die trying. In the unforeseeable future species die out and replicate themselves brains bought and sold biceps too, and physical will augment the digital. 1/18/99 _waiting for an email_ earwax windex why to exponential leaves wither at the touch of environments like the sahara in my eardrums. I've stolen the Tajmahal and eaten the gold dome it was like a chocolate orange, tasted just as sweet, cracked like an egg, one part jagged, pushing up into my gums made me bleed eggshell bloody hell all onto the table. Doves and satan with a red nose (he leads santa's sleigh) all carpet-dive into something resembling the red sea. It's my gum laden blood, the carapace of my ghosts, the dreggs of my dead lovers, the sequin studded leather of my current lover. I'm now a norwegen, or a sacrificial lamb, can't think which. I've got switchblade eyes, treetrunk fists, busker's breath, bat sonar in the sea of night's sky... I storyspace with the best of them, sing like leonard (cohen or nemoy, I don't know.) I now like to look I like to look tomorrow, I wait for email as if it were the end of the world, which it will be if I never get the email... 1/5/99 Questions. What effect if any does the changing of seasons have on the web? What about the changing of days? Months? Hours? Hours are the most obvious factor. Web time, internet time, online time... 10/20/98 Programming Poem in C++ while( scanf( "%look", days_ahead ) ) { if( I get up tomorrow ) { the terrible day will descend; screamf("Fuck you, terrible day!"); } else { The terrible day will not descend; I will lay beached on my bed; a trembling sun will not hinder me; } day++; } 11/23/98 no new mail. no name on my datebooks what an empty desolate no potatos no tomatos no swing dance lessons what subconscious patheticism no signposts no scapegoats no pocket protecting prophets no idea screaming sockets what dreary savage no network television yet no cartoons or doodles no subscription porn no dreamtime crap no science fiction fandom what sad sad sad sad sad 8/21/98 Forms and fields, database detachment. Why isn't there a field for emotional disposition? Is this any less urgent than favorite pet or color? We are increasingly quantified by impersonal statistics. Sociological downtide. (Spirit of ASP.) 9/1/98 18 wheel bitstreams. Text is not enough anymore. We've got to capture eye & ear, mouth & mind. Perfectly quotable, text like thumbnails-- wet your whistle for words. I'm an accounting machine crunching out the numbers of intelect and emotion. Trouble is, you've got to understand both, most don't. My lists are all you've got to chew on. * * * If it took you as long to read this as it takes me to write it, you would understand what I'm saying. * * * Jump on, it's a freeway out there. Ten-ton roller-derby balls of static. User interface universe.
6/24/98
When this page is archaic,
like a .txt file,
I'll store it away
and look at it infrequently.
Poetry will truly be alive then,
writhing and swirling images
changing with your emotions.
The universe will be larger and more full
inside bytes of our digital kingdom.
6/16/98
Communication is the future.When will poetry be recognized as a facet of that future?
When will our destinies mingle, twin selves?
Poetry is the efficiency of language that technology seeks. Unfortunately, poetry often talks of intellectual ideas that are complicated, and convoluted, twisted, and incomplete. We need ideas to match our language. Technology brings us closer to understanding. With understanding we can complete the jobs that poetry has begun.
In the future, we will talk of love...and make sense.
6/9/98
We live case-sensitive lives.
6/3/98
I read recently that the WWC, (the World-Wide-Chicken) took off running down the road. It was in a forwarded email--you know, the humor listserve stuff--all about different chickens and how they cross the road. There was the windows 98 chicken, "expected to cross the road in march, maybe April, for sure by September," and various other system-chickens. Mostly, the email wasn't all that funny, but the image of the world-wide-chicken has stayed with me for a few days. I keep thinking about it at unexpected times.
I place the desktop computer obsolete in ten to twenty years. They ought to be obsolete in five, but businesses are always slow to adopt the newest technologies. "What do we need 'that' for?" they ask. Then in another two years they are forced to buy the latest models or become dinosaurs. The point is that "monitors" and "keyboards" as we know them will not exist. (There will be other optical devices, like AR (augmented reality) goggles, and spoken commands will become more than a reality). You won't need anything larger than a portable CD player to carry around today's conventional PC, and anything truly heavy duty will be the size of today's laptop.
Paste my words!
5/29/98
We live group lives, networks.
Every mind a node,
every mind made up of nodes.
Each shallow twist in our relationships
is the end of an integrated circuit.
5/27/98
Thoughts of living life any other way,
staples, paper clips, computer terminals,
seem condescending-quaint.
5/22/98 (excerpt from a letter to Arlene)
those bit-chip blue chrysanthimums
rose red roses on cathode ray tube monitors
the freshness of email +
the excitement of an admirerer's flowers
here is the new love,
writ in binary.
5/21/98
We live lives through redraw eyes
lines-of-type lives
screen strain lives
networks and email--
silences broken by pipelines
existing in electricity only.
This is my online journal. More than that though, it's also my space (and inspiration) to talk about the way that, for me, technology is more than a life-defining phenomenon. All forms of technology, but especially computer technologies, are for me a form of poetry. Of course, saying something is a life-defining phenomenon is nothing to take lightly. For the past several decades, an amazing percentage of the American populous (and a smaller percentage of the world populous) has been technology dependent. Enough for now.
5/18/98
today designs tomorrow
lust for new life
--life all inclusive--
pennies ripple in a water of info
plop! my head submerged.
This page is my attempt to maintain a connection between technology, hard technology, and poetry. Yes, this is a flakey objective, hardly scientific, but perhaps science is less scientific than we might at first suppose. (For a discussion of this subject, check out Autonomous Technology by Langdon Winner, Against Method by Paul Feyerabend, or any reference to Technological Determinism.)
Perhaps science shapes people's lives as poetry once did. Perhaps computers and the internet are the new poetry, as TV was the new poetry fifty years ago. The way we define poetry has always been tenuous. Definitions are subjective anyway. Enough for now.
5/7/98
on all the lives, on all the living
we make waves of incitement
waves of victory
this is the ode, the call
to arms of words.
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