I have been born into an extremely complex world- where at one time I thought I was the master of my own domain. I watched, I listened as a child and as an adult. I carry around that quiet, pensive person who is and always will be the true person I am. I remember being a little kid, and walking my way to Battle Hill elementary school. I probably was in second grade, and I stopped to buy a jelly donut at the bakery. I put my dime on the counter and in a clear voice stated:
“I want to have a lemon jelly donut” I stated, as I placed my dime on the counter. Then I waited. I saw all kinds of people come and go. They got cakes and pies. There was this big thing that hung from the ceiling where the store workers at the counter pulled string used to wrap up the bakery boxes with their pies and cakes neatly tucked inside. The place was hopping in the morning. I saw people ask for what they wanted, paid for it and then left.
I looked up, I looked around, I don’t know how much time went by but finally when the bakery rush hour cooled down, some lady behind the counter said;
“Oh look at that little boy standing there”.
“I want my yellow jelly donut”! – I exclaimed.
The lady got my donut, put it in a bag for me and took my dime.
Choose a block WordPress asks me. So where do I look to choose one? This is not the “What you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) interface that I recall from a decade ago. No, definitely not. I see there is a “legacy” plug in, that brings all that old technology back, yet it’s time to adapt and evolve. My words still type the same, I found the switch that somehow, magically allows me to make a word or phrase bold. Yet it seems to pop up only when it wants to. And, I am still stuck in some archaic or arcane way of doing things.
So I chose two blocks- Just now! One of them was the picture above when me and my daughter visited Israel for a full month. The other block is reflected in the red words upon a light blue background that you are reading right now.
It’s variety that the new interface allows for. Variety, diversity, new and approved, these are all good things. Yet as much as new shiny new things grab our attention, there are plenty of good things that have become crowded out by the new improvements or methods. These days, you don’t have to stress yourself about reading a book, or newspaper. In fact you don’t need to even search for things very much.
AI is our new G-d! It (Artificial Intelligence) will always be predicting what it thinks you are looking for. How can it know what I want?
Algorithms, answered the grey glossy eye of the interpreter.
“Choose a block now, or risk being ignored.”
“How did you get into my head”?
I silently asked myself, hearing and seeing my own thoughts being translated into text, as I skipped over the various cogs and wheels of my heavily autobiographical words. I have fully switched genres as I imagined a:
Kurt Vonnegut like or Philip K. Dick, inspired world. The title does not fit the piece, I thought to myself, retreating back into my own thoughts, thinking about current events. Everything small has become huge. The plagues that started popping up during the grand turn, the first one being the 9/11 attack on the United States, on September 11, 2001, was a pivotal point from which the world has not yet recovered. A new odyssey into un-chartered waters had been initiated.
Is there no longer a place for free thinking open minded discourse? Every word becomes interpreted differently. The esoteric understandings once handed down by tradition only to those who would use this knowledge for the greater good, has multiplied and proliferated. Now anyone with smartphone and an internet connection can find everything and anything on the web and then either use it, or lose it. You may will choose the path of a writer, or an independent free thinking person, yet without a heart filled without avarice or a strong political affiliation, your spoken and written words are likely to fall unto deaf ears.
At times it’s a struggle. Just to stay with your own thoughts, own ideas. In a very crowded space you need to tell others where to find your art, poetry, or writings on the world wide web. Things get lost in your very own computer in the kind of volume of content out there. It’s rare for an individual to still have a laser like focus on their own field of inquiry.
The importance of it all, really gets lost in the shuffle. Even the planet itself is going through a major overhaul, as things are overheating, over cooling, erupting, destroying everything that once was predictable
The only given or known, is un-known. Now go and celebrate Cinco de Mayo with everyone else. As the Tele-Vision, takes us to something we all can understand.
Stephen C. Sanders- 11:10am Thursday May 5, 2022
