a/s/l

Posted on August 18, 2005
Filed Under Journal, Society, Spirituality, Consciousness, Movies, TV and Media |

Where does it begin already? Ah yeah. I connect. I log in. I identify. From this moment, I submit myself to the data flow. It’s like one of those transcendent Zen meditations. As you sit in that posture and lose focus, you become one with the flow of the universe, you merge with the great whole in a ongoing flux that connects everything.

It’s pretty much like that here too, on the internet. As I sit here in my chair, my posture might not be all that transcendent. Yet, I connect with the whole data flow.

It’s not a metaphor. Weak minds need to go beyond that. It’s not some style fancy new age spiritualist cool image thing. It’s a literal union, a process of conditioning the self to the rhythm and language of the big machine. Except all reverse than in Zen meditation.

Frequent joke on nerdy forums is about how there’s only 10 categories of people in the world – those who understand binary and those who don’t. From where I sit, it could pretty much be the big phrase of some kind of occult society, because in these words lies more than a joke, more than a punch line. There’s a whole worldview passing you by when you browse over those words seen for the 5000th time in someone’s uninspired signature on a forum. And the way it spreads from user to user? Man, they’re all part of the big conspiracy now!

10 categories of people in the word. Read 1-0.

It’s not so much about whether or not you understand binary. It’s more like, does binary understand you? Zen meditation is all about an awakening to the capacity of our awareness to function analogically, that is in the semblance of the object of current reflection. As opposed to circling around prodding the tree to eliminate and highlight specific properties, become the tree. Know what it is from the inside, from its standpoint, and rejuvenate your perception of things. It doesn’t happen here. It doesn’t happen here because there’s only 10 category of people in the world. Those who fill in forms and those who don’t.
It’s not a metaphor.

Form-filling has come to the point where it can pretty much define our civilisation and trace the proverbial line between us and the nature-bound, supposedly primitive people. Everything is about ticking squares, filling in blank boxes and making the right choice about things, and it’s coming faster. On socializing web services, how you fill in that precious little space to tell the others who you are might very well critically define the amount and the quality of responses you get. You can also add a sound or video caption to highlight this. It is kind of like a foretaste for the whole package you’re trying to sell, which is you. Making an impact has become like trying to gain attention from the public on a specific brand new product, one that’s from a firm that doesn’t have the quantity of advertising power that usually brings it from the TV straight into the consumer’s mouth, dishwasher, anything.

I’m starting to believe that the evolution of online profiles might very well come to mimic that of TV commercials. After all, here too it all started black and white with limited options. Then, color got in. Then more space. Video. Sounds. What about the foretaste? On those TV shows we can see how the people are enjoying the new laundry detergent and how it makes everything whiter than white – whatever the promotion topic you chose for your profile, will the public get to see folks testifying of how you’re supposed to be enjoyed and how good you actually are? Some would say that a person’s range of qualities and possibilities is too wide to be simply “evaluated like this”. But on dating web services, it’s not like the range of desired qualities is still that wide anymore. Enjoy a foretaste of Linda. See how efficiently Brad performs. Mona is that good; once you’ve tried you won’t be able to do without.

Those could be the new options offered to you by web dating service administrators in the future.

“Want to know me better? Download one of my preview videos”, Jenny says. Follows a list of activities where you can watch Jenny perform and properly evaluate her. For a meager 4.99$ fee, how about that very special preview?

Picture customer feedback. Picture monthly fees. Picture newsletters. Picture magazine articles.

Ron says: I enjoy Jenny with cream.
Peter says: Excellent service. I can but recommend Jenny to anyone. We had a great time.
Rate user.
Submit feedback.

It’s all there. It’s not hiding.

The big thing about this Form-Culture thing is about labels and the value they take.

Language and one’s sense of social hierarchization already rest on some deeply encrusted notions of what lies behind certain words in terms of lifestyle implications thanks to personal background and mostly general consensus. Given the cultural context, simple one-worders can define you to a person before you’ve actively tried to come across as anything. It’s like it connects to a database of “How Things Are” and when you introduce yourself “I’m an artist”, it looks up “artist” in the database and prints out the proper description to the subconscious. “Oh hi, so you’re an artist! My name is Rose – I love artists”.

Complete with interesting/clever/strange stories to entertain people.

It’s not about what you do. It’s not about the life you’re having. It’s not about what comes through your head.

The Bricks of Reality. Spend some dedicated time online and consider it again. What is reality there based on? Words. Every experience online is composed by words, forming bricks of that online-reality. Everything on the internet is reading and seeing, a textual façade built by letter with its deeper implications. The meaning of words. Thus, everything is symbol, label. It doesn’t get any clearer anywhere. The sense of the worth of things transmits through those labels. But labels don’t say anything of what you do and what your life is.

Veracity isn’t the name of the game.

And it’s just fundamentals.

In the modern cosmos of machines and transmissions, of computers and media, is waged the all-scale war between possible and impossible, and the public’s mind is the battlefield. Like all modern wars, it has its ruling conventions – possible and impossible here simply stand, respectively, for the amount of things that are integrated to a pictured and alluring lifestyle, as opposed to the things deemed undesirable and uninteresting. 1-labels versus 0-labels. Depending on background and mostly on context, the mind is educated and configured to differently review and evaluate those words.

“Embark on a humanitarian mission”, says the screen. And inadvertently, for a minute, the public’s mind wanders from the idea of helping people and saving lives. At subliminal speed, the pictures race throughout the subconscious, handled and filtered by the invisible processor. Is this what you want to do? Is there where you want to be? Channelled alongside a straight, linear consciousness, the great notions of sacrifice, charity, solidarity…
Good. 1-lane.

Picture raw flesh. Disease.
Picture injuries. Severed limbs.
Dying people. Malnourished Children.
Dirt.
Discomfort.
Bad. 0-lane.

Is this what you want to do, it tests.
Is there where you want to be, it tests.

This is where words are the data, lifestyle the computer. It’s not so much about whether or not you understand binary, it’s more like, does binary understand you?
And it is coming faster.

aloysius@clan-latria.com