technology

I can only assume that machines do not have the capacity for moral agency, but computer use is clearly getting to me. I had this dream last night, and I think it's best to try to process it. Yes, "process" it, as in word processing, food processing, information processing, it's what we do in this day and age. Anyway, in my dream...

I'm deeply engaged in a writing project, and I'm actually making some progress, getting stuff done, and feeling some satisfaction. The key to this sense of accomplishment is the ability of the program I'm using to get two related things done at once that used to take two separate operations, a lot more effort, and at least twice the time. It must have been a new upgrade of 'Word' that illustrates each sentence as I write it. It was pretty cool to see the graphic depiction alongside the verbal description in real time.

I suppose it's possible to compile a large but finite set of images in a graphic database that somehow corresponds to an equally large but finite database of verbal statements. It's a little like the Chinese language; you can build a large number of complex statements if you start with a sufficiently large (but comparatively small) number of radicals and combine them in two dimensional configurations - pictograms. I guess some genius in Redmond, Washington, wrote a program that would allow one-dimensional users like me to write/draw the words/pictures that tell/show the story. In my dream, that is.

The punchline was good too, if little sitcom-esque. After I'd written this substantial piece of work, I was ready to show it to someone on a video hook-up, but I couldn't open the document because I couldn't find the remote. That's how the dream ended, with me fumbling around looking for the simple means of opening up this complex work. Helpdesk!