The Cloud
I’m thinking about e-mailing some of my old e-mail addresses. I have some addresses that I no longer use that lay out there somewhere in the proverbial cloud. Are they still receiving messages? Millions of messages urging someone, anyone to buy Viagra and a watch and a college degree? Oh those old domain names. Pipeline which became Mindspring which became Earthlink; hell for one brief not-so-shining moment I even had an AOL account though only until the free hours on the CD I got in the mail ran out.
The crazy, heady 1990s, where have they gone?
How many dead mailboxes are out there just accumulating mail? How many mailboxes of dead people are out there accumulating messages? I know I have a couple of e-mail addresses for dead people. What would happen if I sent them a note? Anything? Can you imagine that there are probably thousands of computers out there in that cloud (funny that they call the Internet a “cloud” now because it is an almost too perfect description of the triple-dubya, clouds can be beautiful or inspiring or innocuous or they can be annoying or damaging or even murderous. Yes, “cloud” is definitely the way to go), thousands of computers just to power all the dead e-mail boxes endlessly receiving messages no human will read, no human will see, where does all the data go? What would it look like if you printed it?
What hath Tim Berners-Lee wrought? What hath J.C.R. Licklinder wrought?
Too late to question it. We are all here, I’m here banging away on keys and you’re here staring at the light bulb. You know why I chose a white-on-black format for this thing? Because I got tired of my eyes hurting after hours and hours of staring at the machine. It’s what I do for a living, you know, stare at the machine and put numbers in the machine and make the machine do math. Then I invent some bullshit verbiage to “explain” the numbers as though numbers aren’t an explanation themselves. Then my employer hands me a paycheck, well, doesn’t “hand”, rather transmits numbers through the cloud into the part of the cloud that is my bank (no longer necessarily a physical entity so much as an abstract one existing in the cloud) and then I distribute subsets of those numbers to other entities in exchange for necessities, pleasures and obligations. And so goes Life in the Digital Age. It’s all so fantastically wonderful, isn’t it gang?
Science says you can’t get somethin’ from nuthin’ (all right fancy pants, you come up with a better description of the conservation of mass or the first law of thermodynamics), so where did all this crap in the cloud come from? What happens to things that are built that are no longer used like dead e-mail boxes? I have a fantasy that as more and more people are born and consequently more and more e-mail accounts are created (or Internet accounts anyway – we know e-mail is an archaic, dying form of communication already ‘cause social networks are where it’s at for the youngsters) that the matter and energy from all other things on earth will slowly disappear and everything will be absorbed by the cloud. The cloud grows ever larger and stronger and envelops us all. The ghosts of the dead come back to answer all their e-mail and finally buy that goddamned watch full of Viagra with a college degree funded by a Nigerian prince. Sure, it’s not as dramatic a fantasy as the Terminator in terms of a machine takeover but unlike the Terminator it has a real chance of happening. Well, it’s real in my mind which makes it real. Solipsism ‘r’ us and all that.
It is hard being painfully middlebrow, but somebody’s gotta do it.
The crazy, heady 1990s, where have they gone?
How many dead mailboxes are out there just accumulating mail? How many mailboxes of dead people are out there accumulating messages? I know I have a couple of e-mail addresses for dead people. What would happen if I sent them a note? Anything? Can you imagine that there are probably thousands of computers out there in that cloud (funny that they call the Internet a “cloud” now because it is an almost too perfect description of the triple-dubya, clouds can be beautiful or inspiring or innocuous or they can be annoying or damaging or even murderous. Yes, “cloud” is definitely the way to go), thousands of computers just to power all the dead e-mail boxes endlessly receiving messages no human will read, no human will see, where does all the data go? What would it look like if you printed it?
What hath Tim Berners-Lee wrought? What hath J.C.R. Licklinder wrought?
Too late to question it. We are all here, I’m here banging away on keys and you’re here staring at the light bulb. You know why I chose a white-on-black format for this thing? Because I got tired of my eyes hurting after hours and hours of staring at the machine. It’s what I do for a living, you know, stare at the machine and put numbers in the machine and make the machine do math. Then I invent some bullshit verbiage to “explain” the numbers as though numbers aren’t an explanation themselves. Then my employer hands me a paycheck, well, doesn’t “hand”, rather transmits numbers through the cloud into the part of the cloud that is my bank (no longer necessarily a physical entity so much as an abstract one existing in the cloud) and then I distribute subsets of those numbers to other entities in exchange for necessities, pleasures and obligations. And so goes Life in the Digital Age. It’s all so fantastically wonderful, isn’t it gang?
Science says you can’t get somethin’ from nuthin’ (all right fancy pants, you come up with a better description of the conservation of mass or the first law of thermodynamics), so where did all this crap in the cloud come from? What happens to things that are built that are no longer used like dead e-mail boxes? I have a fantasy that as more and more people are born and consequently more and more e-mail accounts are created (or Internet accounts anyway – we know e-mail is an archaic, dying form of communication already ‘cause social networks are where it’s at for the youngsters) that the matter and energy from all other things on earth will slowly disappear and everything will be absorbed by the cloud. The cloud grows ever larger and stronger and envelops us all. The ghosts of the dead come back to answer all their e-mail and finally buy that goddamned watch full of Viagra with a college degree funded by a Nigerian prince. Sure, it’s not as dramatic a fantasy as the Terminator in terms of a machine takeover but unlike the Terminator it has a real chance of happening. Well, it’s real in my mind which makes it real. Solipsism ‘r’ us and all that.
It is hard being painfully middlebrow, but somebody’s gotta do it.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDGwCMcLs_M