Lost

(Warning: random musing below.)

I don't get lost like I used to get lost. A new place activates the "exciting and unpredictable" response, rather than he "fear" response. But there other ways to be lost: inside one's head, or inside the electronic extensions of one's head. A few days ago out of sheer boredom, I reorganized my bookmarks, and it has caused me to feel adrift. It's not that I can't find what I'm looking for. I reorganized the system to be more efficient. but what I've lost is a feeling of effortlessness, the feeling of logging on and thinking of a common place out there in the world and being there. I guess it's a matter of time before I learn to associate the new menus and mouse movements with specific constellations of expectations, but its temporary loss has left me a little more listless than usual. It was as if I lost access to some commonly used part of my brain. This is only odd if we think of the self as having some simply defined boundaries, however. Who will say that my favourite webpages are not part of me? Who can claim that this very phrase is not in its way me? Just as the words that we speak are a window for others to look through, so are written things, so are little electronic vibrations on silicon chips somewhere. Thay are not just gateways into self, they are self. Okay, that's enough of that. It's not like it's important.

Next time: something on artificial intelligence, because this mandering paragraph has primed it.

Consider: "Macintosh: we might not get everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end."