From out-of-vehicle to out-of-body

Part Two: From out-of-vehicle to out-of-body

By the time I was siting in the Motor Vehicle Bureau I was doubtless hyper-receptive to the strangeness of the world we live in, and uncommonly motivated to retrieve some value from a bizarrely lost day. The result is the following narrative.

Codes and Patterns

A bug in the code.

As reported in these pages, I seem to have found a bug in the legal code which transfers 100s of millions of dollars from the pockets of motorists to the coffers of the State of Massachusetts, and at this moment it seems as if the Motor Vehicle Bureau is offering me a mind-bendingly Malkovitchian portal into the brain of society. My laptop is in my backpack; a cheap digital camera is available at the electronics store down the hall. Letís make a documentary.

A new character.

Self Portrait

The Aiptek VR Cam ($69.oo, Best Buy) could hardly be simpler. Works as a standalone (low resolution) Voice Recorder, Digital Camera (stores 26 pictures) and Digital CamCorder, and connected to the computer via a USB cord as a webcam.

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Iím sitting in the motor vehicle bureau holding a paper ticket indicating my place in line. A human voice emitted by a non-human computer intones "now serving ticket number F549 at booth 11. The LCD display at the right concurs. So does Booth 11, whose own flashing LCD beckons "F549, F549". Overhead, moving headlines report todayís news. Signs cover the walls. Computer terminals assist each booth attendant. Each includes a camera and printer for producing licenses and Ids (and storing the data). A room full of computer terminals tests motorists (and records data).

Iím code bound!

Linguistic Codes

[sigma] Numbers ->quantity
[sigma] Letters -> quantity and sound
[sigma] Ticket Ids ("F549") -> my place in line
[sigma] Speech->Numbers and Letters, words
[sigma] Words to conceptsÖ

Electronic DataCodes

[sigma] Driving the speech synthesiser
[sigma] Driving the LCDs
[sigma] Encoding and storing the images captured by my camera.
[sigma] Encoding test results

The messages on the newreel

[sigma] Nasdaq down 143 points
[sigma] Most popular movies.
[sigma] "Andersen Consulting Indicted for Enron" (revenge of the financial and legal codes!)

Get me out of here.

I use my credit card to pay my fines.   My license is reinstated.

More data points has enter the system. They are me. 

With a reinstated license I can reclaim my car!
I use my cell phone to dial 411 to get the number of a cab company to call a cab to reunite me with my car. The staff authenticates me by phone, authenticates my credit card payment via modem, records their release of my keys on a paper form.

......A form relates my license to my keys...A tag relates my key to my car;my key connects me to my carís motor....The dashboard reciprocates.

......

Itís cold, Its nasty, and the day is almost over,

But Iím on my way home!

More Codes and switchesÖ

[sigma] Öhelp me turn on my fog lamps so other drivers can see me
[sigma] Öhelp me defrost my windshield so I can see them
[sigma] Öhelp me thermoregulate
[sigma] Öhelp me hear the world news.
[sigma] Öshunt me toward home and what we call "normal life"

I stop at the supermarketÖ
Ö where paper broadsheets help me trade off my financial and energetic requirementsÖ

Öand 2-dimensional iconic representations
of someone Iíve never met
persuade me to balance my financial requirements
(and his !)
against those of my electronic devices.

Iím on the home stretch.   For one brief moment, a vista of patterns without codes.

Iím home.

I check my email and prepare to encode my experiences to upload them to you, Dear Reader, to get on with my life.

You call this life?

More and more codes.
Fewer and fewer unmediated patterns.
The conquest of matter by proliferating pattern proliferators.

Living things were the first pattern proliferators.
Grass makes grass.Ruminants turn grass into more ruminants. 
People turn wild ruminants into domestic cows.  People turn cows into pictures of cows.

     

Pictures proliferateÖÖon devices for proliferating messages.
Pictures of signals proliferateÖ.
Pictures of devices for producing signals proliferate on devices for proliferating messages.

Get the picture? Codes spawning codes to preserve, protect, and propagate codes.

 

© Copyright 2004 Jon Schull. Last update: 1/28/04; 2:31:35 PM.