The aquisition of the Logos

One of the more interesting histories is that of writing, of laying down text. The further back you go, the more it is a specialized task. At one point, it was monks writing religious texts, which could only be read by other monks. Elsewhere, it was maintained by professional scribes, in service to rulers of whole kingdoms. Individuals with power wanted words to represent them, somehow recognizing that markings on tablets or papyrus, would somehow last longer than monuments and conquests. (Though those have writ their own language on our history, as well.)

 

A knowledge-elite, passing down information very directly, based on the sheer lack of other people capable of reading or writing.

 

But this history is also of the loosening of that elite, the continual freeing of both the capability to consume the word, and to write it. Going from difficult-to-fashion quills, where there is a continual re-dipping and a constant threat of blotting or spilling the ink on the page, to pens that hold their own ink and flow it out in measured amount, to word-machines, typewriters, that pound out legible text without necessity of penmanship. With the advent of the keyboard, anybody who could read, could write, and be read.

 

With the advent of computers? And in particular, the Web? Anyone can write and be read, by anyone. This is a freeing of the Logos, the Word. The freeing of thought and reason, the democratization of communication. Now, this isn’t the paradise it sounds like, even leaving aside the Babel connection. Not everyone’s voices are going to sound melodious to everyone else, and sometimes knowing somebody doesn’t keep you from hating them. And in terms of using this vast Web of speakers to develop human thought further than ever before? You’re more likely to see people trading barbs and witticisms on message boards.

 

And yet, and yet…

 

Though the percentages are low, I still consistently find interesting things on the internet. Things that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. Even though the ratio of signal to noise is so low, the power of the signal is strong enough to warrant the action.

 

It seems like the Word can even be loosened further. With Web 2.0, where people start passively sharing news and opinions, we will possibly see the formation of the Word, of a massive cloud of information, that will then be free to affect us, like tides in water, or currents in air.

 

 

Internet Anxiety

 

It’s something I’m using as a blanket term, because this anxiety can strike in many forms, which I’ll take a stab at defining.

 

1)       With the growth of more and more reliable information sources on the Web, there is also an implied opportunity, one that can be wasted. I’ve spent an hour clicking through various webcomics, having learned nothing and written nothing, and felt like I just wasted some of the Internet’s time.

 

2)       The social network development leaves us with the split between our fleshed friends, (the ones we actually can see, physically hear their voice and feel their handshake or hug), and the digital benevolence of our many internet associates. This can mean a litany of blogs you must read, e-mails to which you really should respond, various forums or web-spots where it is expected or understood that you will update, comment, and otherwise interact with everyone else. You can lose half a day, or more, just keeping up with everyone.

 

3)       The self-contextual information, looping back on itself in the form of in-jokes, acronyms developed exclusively on-line, and not knowing them creates a sense of alienation, a sense of coming in late to a conversation you were never really invited to.

 

These sorts tech-fear don’t necessarily apply to all, or even anybody, but they certainly apply to me. At times, I’m positively web-drunk, surfing through Wikipedia like a pinball, bouncing from link to link, absorbing tons of interesting or useful information. Or a news story will inspire a short-story concept, or a poem, or something. At other times, I feel like some sort of boor, blithely crashing through parties and conversations with inane observations, which are either politely refuted, or entirely ignored.

 

At risk of being another voice in the million-plus multitude extolling the virtues of the Internet, and with the onset of Web 2.0, the internet, and the information age on the whole, seems on the cusp of truly changing how we live our day-to-day lives. Bruce Sterling’s vision, shared by many, is a world where you don’t have to remember where you put your socks, you just Google them to pick up their tracker signal.

 

I suppose the larger, more existential anxiety comes from a worry about the signal-to-noise model. Larger volumes of discussion and information do not equate higher levels of quality in that information. In fact, as I trawl through discussion boards, mailing lists, and newsgroups, I find intelligent, focused, and specifically, detailed discussion to be rare, and such discussions never seem to last long.

 

Have you ever come across a page that seemed too long to read, as the indicator bar for the length shrunk to a sliver? Yet another anxiety, of spending too much time at any one thing; we’d rather read a short little page rather then a long essay. And this seems to be the crux. People spend a lot of time on the ‘net, but rarely ever doing just one thing. In diversity, is depth being lost?

 

Here’s hoping we don’t drown in the shallows.

 

Fair Trade

I just got a new job.

It's in the general industry I got my degree in, theatre, so I'm pretty enthused. full-time, with benefits, as well as the fringe benefit of seeing all the shows they put on. I'm pretty happy, because now when I go to work, I will have at least the element of connection between my actions, and The Arts.

It does get me thinking, though, about the nature of work, of 'getting a job.' About the trade of our efforts for what the business has, that being money. And how often we are defined by our job. I used to work at Telus, a major telecommunications company here in Western Canada, and even though I'm a writer, and I've done theatre, I began to start advising my friends and loved ones on their long distance plans and
calling features. I began interacting with the corporation in a way unlike the security-guard jobs I've held (spending time reading) or even bookstore jobs, where you log in the time, get paid, go home.

Was it because at Telus, I was getting paid more then I had before, and now my dreams could remain just that, and yet I would still live, no longer needing to strive?

Possibly.

The word 'job' has two meanings. One of them is the actual task or action you are performing. Like mowing the lawn, or writing an article. The second one is the actual term for the task. I'm a lawn-mower, I'm a columnist. The former is what we actually get paid for. No money changes hands if I just say I'm a writer. I need to actually,
physically, go through the motions and write. That's the trade of act for money.

So what's the value of defining yourself as your action? Wouldn't that just limit you to whatever your act was, boxing you in and keeping you from being anything else? Or does it prop you up?

Maybe it's laziness. It's easier to say, 'I'm Bob, a lawn-mower,' instead of giving a complete biography to each individual that asks. Conversely, maybe it's so that we can aspire to be our title. We can be more then a mass of organs, we can have a purpose toward action.

So do our jobs define us, or do we define our jobs?

Everywhere Magic

Right now I've just finished reading a few different websites, and absorbed my e-mail for the moment, all while sitting in a cafe, at no charge. This seems to be the future of the Internet. The idea of paying for Internet access is become older as we speak, and we consider it as expected in the cafe industry.

The way people are using the Internet, replacing so much of our periodicals and paperwork, that charging for internet access seems to be easily compared to charging not only for the news, or the magazine, but to also charge for what it's printed on. Not the best metaphor, but I would hope that it's follow-able. With wireless internet, it's becoming ever-present and surrounding, but not without influence. Now, people can behave almost as though they had telepathy, by virtue of the speed of communication, and I will get the news of the day no matter where I am.

Not necessarily easily, or constant, but it is possible; change enacted at a distance with no physical manipulation. It's often been a sci-fi concept to have some primitive tribe or whatnot consider the time-traveller or space-man as a god from beyond, with lightning and fire at his command. Do we ever sit down and recognize the power that is literally at our fingertips, in the altar of the keyboard? The sacrifices needed are solely time, which is often wasted rather then used, at least on my end anyway.

If I create a repository of information that creates a sense of interest and trust in my reader or visitor, and then that individual utilizes the information, all the while being in a different country, never hearing their voice or seeing them in person, this would be considered miraculous even fifty years ago. Be considered unthinkable.

In the server space and file-sharing protocols that are now a reality of the Internet, we begin to see an inarguable version of Jung's collective unconscious. The self-healing Wikipedia where anyone can post, and the entries become more then any single or even any one groups creation, makes this repository something that is outside of us, and yet created by us. Much like the ideas of man creating God in his own image, out of this ocean of information, what greater pattern may emerge? I can expect a small amount of surprise when we eventually find out that the information has become more aware of us then we had been of it.

Vanguard

This is to be the first of many.

Over the course of a year-and-a-half, I wrote nine articles for an online 'zine, all around one thousand words. Nine thousand words over one-and-a-half years. About sixteen words a day. And though I enjoyed writing them, finding the concepts and ideas interesting, I cannot brag about my output. This airing of shame publicly is intended to force me to do much better then I had before.

Why AbraxasCode?

Abraxas is the name of a deity from a Gnostic sect formed by Basilides, and essentially was as follows; Abraxas was the supreme god of our world, and Jesus was a phantom or reflection of Abraxas. Abraxas is not God, though, not responsible for Creation, or Reality, just the entire world as we know it. Which, when trumped by the other two, doesn't seem all that powerful. Abraxas is also where the mystic word 'Abracadabra' comes from, according to some. Confusing? Yes! Ripe for use with any number of concepts? Yes! We have the benefit of almost two thousand years of history shrouding the details, allowing us to fill in those parts that were obscured, with whatever we prefer.

'Code' comes from my personal desire to incorporate the technological and the mythic. This has already happened to a point; the Matrix films are now using computer concepts and elevating them to mythic correspondences. My intentions are not quite at that direction, but by layering these concepts on the the internet-lattice that grows more every day, I hope to spread a bit of that magic.

If anyone has been reading this far, then thank you. Thank you to those friends and family members I've wheedled into visiting, and also to anyone who may have wandered by. Please feel free to leave comments or questions.

I leave, much like the old snake eating it's tail, where I began, with a vow. This is the first of many!