 oaxacan street graffiti – foto by smith lady and i were talking, and i brought up bubble memory (a mid 1970s concept that didn’t last long). this lead to core memory and twistor memory for computers. bubble, core and twistor were all invented by the same guy – and all three were immediately replaced by cheap chips. lady says, “I don’t even want to think about the engineering aspects involved.” she speaks like this because for 10 years she was an electrical engineer working with artificially intelligent neural nets. now she’s working with artificially intelligent me instead. i’m not as profitable, but i am funnier in my body electric. i reassure her. “the scientists only pretend to create core and bubble memory. what they really do is sit around and draw up strange schematics to build wired creatures which work in the imagination only – then they go into their dark rooms out of sight, put on robes, sing strange chants to odd dances and sacrifice small animals to really make it work.” electricity isn’t science, it’s magic. if we didn’t believe it, it wouldn’t flow. belief is imperative. what is is simply the agreed upon. if enough of us stopped believing in the traitorous naked greed for power called john mccain and the slimy pile of doggy poo called sarah palin, they’d disappear. every time i think of mccain or palin or cheney or bush, i think fondly of the tree shredder in the movie Fargo – which is a logical association since all four of them are shredding the american dream.  the lines between right & wrong – foto by smith |