It is all digital


"The universe is based on sullen entropy. It falls apart as it goes on..."

Night before last I had a series of dreams that MUST be drawn from the recent lecture called "Plenty of Room at the Bottom" about miniaturization. This isn't some lecture on making small parts, it was about extreme miniaturization in making factories and printed matter that is measured in angstroms. But, it feeds nicely into how a CD is burned and the very technologies that became (30+ years later) the computer age.

Anyway, I was sitting in the kitchen I had drawn when I was a kid in school...about 3rd grade. You don't know about it, but I do because I lived it. It was a kitchen table with George Washington and Abe Lincoln sitting having a discussion about pizza. Long story there. Outside the window (and the reason I won an award for the picture when I was a kid) was a canon shooting pizzas at the long lines of troops for each side. Why were Abe and George seemingly the two sides? I dunno, I was a kid. But, that was the setting for my dream anyway. It was drawn in crayon and an unsteady hand.

Behind me on one side was the window that in my picture had the shooting pizzas, but it actually had two smokestacks. They were drawn but looked like the Battersea powerplant from the cover of Animals. The two smokestacks were opposite the window that wouldn't have been drawn in my picture (it would be behind the viewer). In that window was a single smokestack like the one in the photo I took of the Slow Poisoners at Toxic Beach.

Anyway, as I sat and talked about narcotic pain killers with George and Abe, and George showed Abe his wooden teeth to Abe showing George his wooden leg (yeah, forget the history here), the smokestacks would spit smoke puffs. The order was paramount in the dream. First the two, then the one, then back. It was actually the entire Encyclopedia encrypted in the digital puffs of smoke. That was the point of the dream.

George and Abe got into an argument about what kind of wood was used to make the teeth and leg and when I suggested it was made of the tree George cut down the two of them got really pissed at me and I woke up before reading the end of the encrypted message. I woke up feeling very unsettled like I had missed the ending.

Posted: Tue - November 18, 2003 at 07:20 AM      

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