Ariza | Internet | 17 October 2011, 7:45pm
I feel lost without my iPhone. Then when I have satiated myself with the incredible touch-screen, I feel lost without my laptop, this writing device I am currently using. When spent here I will feel lost without the television, the internet, the music player, the DVD player, the wireless transmitter in my car, my tablet. Each one calls to me, each undressing itself in the dark and drawing me with the promise of unspoken elementary delights.
I am not alone. Sitting around on a Saturday night, a group of friends are having a good time. There is liquor, munchies and a pleasant conversation relayed around. Tune in closer and you’ll notice a pattern. All our cell phones – touch phones - are drawn. One of them reads aloud his observation:
“A Sierpinski Gasket is a fractal endless triangle. You can write an algorithm to create a Sierpinski Gasket. It was used by the writer David Foster Wallace as the pattern for his famous book Infinite Jest”
Isn’t it clever? A purely intellectual undertaking! But look closer… and try getting into the mind of the person who is reading this detail. An accountant by profession – what is he doing talking about a Sierpinski Gasket? Just then he sheaths back the touch phone and forgets all about this Sierpinski Gasket. Yet for a brief while there he was the master of fractals.
Whats wrong with that?
In the natural world some creatures live for briefest of times. Perhaps a butterfly only lives (as a butterfly ofcourse, not pupae or a caterpillar) for a couple of days. And who cares how long love-birds live? An inventory of such animals might just reveal that 90% of the world lives for less than a day. Yet Humans value eternity – the idea that things should last forever. This includes knowledge. We demand that knowledge should be permanent. Why?
Here is a random list of things from anyone’s day.
1. News
2. Gossip
3. Facebook posts
4. Twitter posts
5. Work-Deadlines
6. Orgasms
And this is the percentage of time I spend chasing these?
1. News – 10%
2. Gossip - 15%
3. Facebook posts – 10% and increasing
4. Twitter posts – I do read about Amitabh Bachchan’s Twitter post – 5%
5. Work-Deadlines – 70%
6. Orgasms – J
Yes most of this stuff dies on touch. But isn’t it pleasurable to reach out and feel them there? That they exist? That is why I need my iPhone, iPad, my lap-top or even my TV! That is why they draw me everywhere – at work, at home, while driving, in the lift and heck – even in the toilet. Not plugged in means I am loosing knowledge – about something that just happened in the world, something that happened with Priyanka Chopra, with my friends, with my colleagues as they chip away at yet another daily deadline and with the world of erotica that is being augmented everyday in geometric proportion.
And then suddenly they all stopped working. Together! For no particular reason I was cut off from the rest of the world. Condemned to exile! How could I ever catch up on 24 hrs??? How can I get back the chance to be most commented on face book posts again – catch up on all the new stuff that Reuters, New York Times, The Hindu published. I was lost, lost….
But I live…. Time’s ticking. Steve Jobs died that day, and the world – without me reading or commenting on it - moved on.
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