make something which experiences, reacts to its environment, changes, is non-stable...
... make something indeterminate, which always looks different, the shape of which cannot be predicted precisely...
... make something which cannot 'perform' without the assistance of its environment...
... make something which reacts to light and temperature changes, is subject to air currents and whose function depends on the forces of gravity...
... make something which the 'viewer' handles, with which he plays and thus animates...
... make something which lives in time and makes the 'viewer' experience time...
... articulate something natural...

Hans Haacke, Cologne, 1965

Thu, Apr 12, 2007  Permanent link
Categories: favourite_quotes

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Language as Virus
Project: The Total Library

I rarely share CNN stuff; they suck in journalism. But this little window into Shishmaref, Alaska is interesting.

There is a concern of dialects and languages being lost, and as a result, cultures being lost. Of 4000 or so spoken languages, we have about 2500 left, some spoken by as little as one person, and when that person is gone, the language is gone unless it was successfully transmitted.

However, at the same time that we are losing ancient languages and cultures, we are gaining new ones. This is either happening the way it has happened for centuries, which is by the fragmentation of social and cultural groups that leads to dialects; or in more creative ways such as completely new construction—which also has historical roots—such as Esperanto, Klingon and now Na'vi. Are the linguists and scientists too worried with loss of old languages (and cultures) to realize the new emerging ones? But the concern for loss of language extends to regular people too, speakers of a particular language, not just scientists. Let's take current English as an example. In the comments of the io9 post linked above, one person says "Work on America speaking better English first." And a few comments are exchanged on what is really about the action the limitations of technology have taken on changing our language, primarily SMS and IM by altering our spelling, and now tweets that require new abbreviated grammar, which also incorporates the new spelling, all compounding the transformation of informal written English.

As both student and teacher, I have always been meticulous of proper spelling and grammar. I am even picky with tweets, SMS and IM and spell everything out (yes, I face space and character limitations too frequently because because is not bcuz). However, after reading and re-reading De Landa's chapter Memes and Norms in A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, I am more convinced of allowing English to be changed through our use of technology. Technology is adding new words (blog) and redefining old words (blackberry). As we are becoming more intertwined with and defined by our technologies, why can they not define new grammar and new spelling? As De Landa puts it, 'the sheer weight of numbers decides its ultimate fate.' He provides Norman French and Roman Latin as examples where though one was the language of English aristocracy, and the other was regulated and forced through the language of law and religion, neither were able to 'take over as the language of the masses', because the masses were speaking their own languages and dialects and they outnumbered the ruling classes. So we can enforce proper spelling and grammar by attaching consequences to it like the Romans did—with grades instead of arm power—or we accept that the growing number of English speakers are adopting new spelling and grammar. This is not a new idea, it's called Spelling and Language Reformation.



Ed Rondthaler illustrates redundancies of English spelling.

I think I may have written somewhere on SC, about my anxiety over losing languages; saddened over the switch from blackberry to Blackberry. I still feel sad when I learn of nature words omitted from the Oxford English Dictionary for Children. How can children be taught to care for nature and environment when they do not know or understand the words that define it?

Omitting words and redefining word spelling are different though. Marcos Novak disagrees; he asserts that 'changing spelling, changes meaning therefore completely changing the language because the connection to the root word is lost'; the original word may as well be omitted from the language. I disagree on the premise that society and humanity are constantly changing and cannot be defined by old words and older meanings. As technologies create more modes of interactions and emotions, our old language will not have enough words for describing and expressing ourselves. In turn we create new words and redefine old words. As we evolve, we advance our language. But if we are adamant about tying everything to proper root words as they were being used in 800AD, 1600 or even 1980, will we not face a problem of inadequate expression? A while back some members of SpaceCollective began brainstorming new word definitions—in a way, reclaiming the language to fit our current needs and modes of expression. (I can't locate the post and it's string of comments. If you do, please create a synapse.) Etymology is vertical and hierarchical, while redefinition is horizontal and mesh-like. The vertical is a slice through strata with diversity across time, while the horizontal stitches together from a larger cultural sample where time is not varied, but common (or has little variety, ie. 15 years, not 150 years). A word which was relevant at one time, is not relevant at another time. Loyalty to the root is therefor not feasible as it slows down emotional and cognitive evolution.

My title for this post, Language as Virus, is not from William S Burroughs' quote, "Language is a virus from outer space." I have not even been able to locate the context of that quote. (the internet may seem like a good place to look for something, but sometimes it is too big to find what you are looking for.) I came about the title when I began thinking how words are formed and accepted between a group of people, and drew a literal parallel with a virus, an agent that replicates through a host body. This also came about from reading the opening paragraph to the Memes and Norms chapter:

Human languages are defined by sounds, words, and grammatical constructions that slowly accumulate in a given community over centuries. These cultural materials do not accumulate randomly but rather enter into systematic relationships with one another, as well as with the human beings who serve as their organic support.

In the case of our ubiquitous technologies, who is the virus: (the) language (of technology) or technology itself? Are we the hosts, or is our language the host? Are we the agents of change through the language or is technology changing us? My mind went wild thinking of the cycle: We create mimetic systems; they take control; we become mimetic systems; we take back control, and the cycle continues—a popular sci-fi plot. However, the "they" are not the machines, the robots, etc. it is the language, the vowels, the consonants, the syllables. Soon we will speak code. The break down and baring of language to shorthand logic for everyday communication and transmission of information is inevitable. We already do that through email and text messaging where all words are reformulated to codes and eventually broken down to two numbers. We are already internally vocalizing the same complex-to-simple shift when reading w/ r u 2day? (Is SMS written or spoken language?)

Language is communication. Language is culture. Language is poetry. Language is a hand-woven silk rug. Language is a hunting scene painted on the wall of a cave. They all communicate a story about their originating and executing culture. The 'etymology' of these languages are varied; we cannot trace them to a common or single poem, rug, painting, etc. So why should we insist on tracing our spoken and written language to a single common word, an instance in time, so long ago that we cannot even identify with?

Fri, Dec 18, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: language, code, rant
Sent to project: The Total Library

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Society for Utopian Studies

"Progress is the realization of Utopias." -Oscar Wilde

I have never ever held any 'pay' memberships other than the gym. Professional memberships that cost $$$ like AIA, IDSA, ASID or AIGA—never thought about it. Super Pro memberships that cost $$$$ like ACM—never ever thought about it. Why? I don't see the point of joining the fraternity (okay, ASID is a sorority. That's about it.) But this one...

I joined.

I am disappointed in me for not knowing earlier about The Society for Utopian Studies. I have been fantasizing about my Utopia (Other Earth) where all knowledge and technology are free and readily accessible to everyone. In the real world—the current dystopia of a looming 40% fee hike across University of California—I imagined my utopia manifesting itself in an interdisciplinary Department for Utopian Studies. Or even bigger, a Ministry. Forget foreign policy. Let's study the collective ideals of humanity and see how we can make it a reality. It makes sense given the various forms utopias (and dystopias) manifest themselves: art, architecture, social studies, literature, economics, theology, psychology.... and on and on.

The reality of our day-to-day lives is that we are all striving towards our ideals. It is also what leads us to conflict because every person's utopia is always someone else's dystopia. Though it would be more productive to say we should not force our utopias on each other, the fact is that we would probably be at peace if we were not imagining utopias at all and just went on our daily lives playing, sleeping, eating bon-bons and sexting (less human contact involving emotional stuff = less emotional problems).

Did I just turn on myself?

Thu, Nov 19, 2009  Permanent link

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Web Compartmentivity
Project: The Total Library

I wrote this post last December but didn't publicly post it here. I don't why, other than I immensely hate facebook, I was ranting and thought I'll keep it to myself.

But, appearing in this past year, there are already solutions to what I perceive to be internet problems (ie CargoCollective, Behance Network and Google Wave are three solutions). Social networking needs to move into a broader collaborative environment for generating meaning, as well as moving away from information consumption to knowledge building. I don't want to hear of 'user-generated content'. Content doesn't always contain meaning; it is a neutral word and neutrality in the space of the internet is what allows it to deviate from full integration with the greater human network.

The internet, or World Wide Web as it is affectionately referred to but rarely actually called by, was meant to connect without boundaries and borders, everyone and everywhere. Everyone was hotly pursuing unique and personal web and email addresses. YourName@hotmail.com and YourName.com were the catch of the day. Web addresses had permanent 'open house' for all to enter and visit and they were growing by the day. If you were a 'creative' you had your own dot com address and if you were not, you were on Tripod, Geocities, Angelfire or something of the sort. Site designs were personalized on the low-end with centre-justified mutli-coloured fonts and flashy animated gifs, or on the high-end with flashy Flash interfaces which come as presets and tools in new versions of Flash these days, or are just coded in a snap in a variety of other software and languages. Regardless of looks and limits in terms of who was online, and minus members-only forums, everyone was welcome everywhere.

Type the address and click Enter, the World Wide Web is an undiscriminating portal.

This trend of personalized websites and addresses became more and more sophisticated and by the dot com bust, if you Google a band or DJ, local or international, you would find their website; if you Google a friend you may have found them as well. You were also likely to not find your long-lost friends and classmates. You could pay up and use FindYourClassmates.com or some other people-finder web service, or you could use orkut and a select number of other newly minted "social networks." Your web just got cast bigger and wider because now you can find those who never had the personal web space nor the Tripod or Angelfire public spaces. Simultaneously blogs and vlogs start popping up and the web is getting bigger because every mom is now blogging about their toddler's eating habits and their family vacations and DIY home projects.

The web is out of control! All the people you find, all the information all the happenings!

But one day, you are forced to make an account before you can view a friend's profile, or read a blog or view pictures. You're closed off unless you join. What's the harm, so you make a friendster profile—but soon switch to myspace because you don't like friendster telling you who you can or cannot be on the web. You make a profile for yourself (and one for your cat for shits and giggles). Soon after you're barraged with friend requests (even for your cat from some obscure band trying to create a fan base). Well, you have the myspace so why not try the next popular marketing trick, facebook. This all a blast because you are re-connecting with friends you didn't even know you have!

We are under the illusion—or is it delusion?—that our network has grown.

The web has allowed for everyone to have presence in the world, and to be reached and read and viewed and reacted upon. Social networking sites and blog sites have taken this connectivity one step further by allowing for everyone to have a "personalized" presence regardless of skill and technical capabilities. But three issues have emerged:

1_The meaning of true personalization is lost.
2_The web is compartmentalized and actually made smaller.
3_All information is secondary and tertiary. Primary sources are lost.

1_
I do not miss rainbow comic sans and animated gifs, but I do miss the obvious effort one made to create a website in an attempt at having a presence all their own. Despite the abundance of custom designed and coded websites, and personalized WordPress sites which veer far from standard WP, a massive majority of internet users link to standardized facebook/twitter/myspace profiles, the status quo of our online presence, masked as personal spaces of expression. The IKEA and DWR of the internet. A personal website (YourChosenTag.com) is hardy viewed unless it is the provided direct link on one of these social networking portals or if one makes a conscious decision to include a personal website in lieu of the social network profile.

Maybe I am nostalgic, but, HTML, CSS and Javascripting are languages of our time. I see no reason for every internet user* of 2009 to not know these fundamental communication vocabularies to create their own existence online, even if it means creating the 90's equivalent websites in the latest version of Dreamweaver. The knowledge and command of these vocabularies for self-expression, is equal to building our vocabulary for our spoken language and expressing our thoughts verbally. To be more eloquent, we will quote and borrow thoughts from others whom are well-established. However, we will never be fully realized unless we take full command of our spoken language and begin forming our own thoughts and combination of vocabulary to communicate in. Similarly, we will take a myspace page and customize it to a certain permitted degree in CSS in order to express ourself, but a myspace page for a band will never explore the full range of creative possibilities a band can possess when the knowledge of the markup language is limited to begin with, and further limited by the nature of the space within it is used in. LinkdIn and facebook leave no space for web languages to be exercised, and through their perfect, regulated aesthetic and order only reveal the flawed social constructs of regulation and order: the economic system (where you worked, at what capacity, on what corporate gig) and of empty, one-way relationships ("for any one listening" here is my status for today...), where for acceptance we voluntarily stereotype and order ourselves into groups and affiliations.

Updating news about oneself on facebook is about as impersonal as mass emails where an unknown number of recipients, maybe 5, maybe 500 are BCC'd. Though I hate CC's, I actually feel better with accidental CC's where I realize I am one of say 5 recipients 'chosen' to receive the news. I feel good to be thought of, it even feels better to know I was manually chosen; not only did s/he think of me, but actually went through a contact list of hundreds and clicked the radio button by my name. Just as the mass emailing, the facebook status updates have no intended target audience and no personalization of the subject. No, 'your network of friends' is too broad; every friend is different, and not every friend needs to know everything. As a result of receiving news in the passing, the system of empathy breaks.

2_
Costco offers everything you think you need and everything you never thought you need in large quantities. IKEA is the same. Both deal with consumption, one with comfort in excess, the other with lifestyle. If we limit ourselves to these two mega-stores which offer everything, we would miss out on the whole Mall and all the other offerings. Jeez, we'd even miss out on all the stuff Walmart has. Our shopping/browsing world gets reduced from the expanse of the Mall to the confines of the one or two stores. The isolation and shrunken space is furthered if we get catalogues and communication from only that one or two favoured stores. This claim needs a survey and I am speculating based on what I see around me. I used sit in a cafe, airport, school—anywhere with public internet—and I would look over and discover a new site someone was viewing. We all catch glimpses of each other's screens and a good part of what I see these days, and the past couple years, is a mini-web of a few million: facebook.

Social networking users (being a user is a key issue, as opposed to being a creator) are like the shoppers of Costco, IKEA, etc who hardly venture to other stores. Even if they do check somewhere else out, it is through a recommendation or link on facebook. That is equivalent to someone recommending a product at Sears instead of your favoured IKEA; you accept the recommendation, however, when you do step into Sears, you go straight to that product and don't look through any other floor. You may look around the immediate vicinity of the product you were referred to, but that's just about it. Considering the billions of pages that make the internet, it appears that many have become users of few pages, rather than discoverers and creators of a greater number.

3_
The other day my friend and I decided to go to an after party. I asked where is it? She said she didn't know. I asked where did you see it? She said it was on my facebook. She might as well have said 'I saw it on a taxi ad'. Though, not being on facebook, I did not even know about the party at all, but my friend who is a facebook user didn't have much information either. I think our party life would have been more hopping if we knew the primary source of the information, and if it was posted and advertised on a more open and accessible network. This incident was not isolated and I have faced it many times.

Information is easily shared and spread on the internet and as a result we are in a situation where news needs to be verified. It travels fast, gets re-posted over and over, commented on, reabsorbed, paraphrased, etc. Within less than a day, the original news source is not only lost, but the message is many times transformed. We have to pick and chose to find the right source and our task is harder online with the billions of webpages out there. But Google can only pull about 17% of those anyway**. To add to this dilemma of finding the right source, many of us get subjective selections of news through facebook posts. More often than not, all information in regards to a news worthy event, or a topic of interest, is right there on the Wall, requiring no need to navigate away from that facebook page. The act of 'navigating away' has long been a concern of web designers and marketers and we have seen many engaging ways of keeping people on a website, not allowing them to lose attention and move on to something else. facebook has brilliantly solved this by utilizing our trusted network, in addition to creating an easy interface for adding and sharing information. But the very sinister convenience of staying on one place and trusting your network means many times we do not seek the primary source of information. All information is therefore secondary.

Granted human knowledge is bazillionary in terms of the generations and number of mouths and minds it has passed through to get to us, but we still have primary sources of knowledge to refer to for building new knowledge. We shouldn't be using and absorbing information; we should be building and creating new knowledge and that ain't happening if we don't venture out into the World Wide Web without a safety net.

I want to get lost online and never come across a familiar index page.




* Okay, so I kinda know js.
** I read that somewhere online.

Fri, Nov 6, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: rant, facebook, anti-social networks
Sent to project: The Total Library

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Space Babies

Maybe this explains why aliens abduct Earthlings for sexual experiments.

Fri, Aug 28, 2009  Permanent link

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Q&A
Project: The Total Library

A collection of essays by great thinkers and doers of the "third culture" in response to an annual question posed by Edge.

Tue, Apr 7, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: John Brockman
Sent to project: The Total Library

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Desirable Prosthetics
Project: Polytopia

Sat, Mar 14, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: bionic
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Social Networking Tools and our Future Society
Project: The Total Library

In the chapter titled Author as Producer of Walter Benjamin's Reflections, he introduces Sergei Tretiakov's 'operating writer', and how his/her mission, as opposed to the 'informing writer', is "not to report but to struggle; not to play the spectator but to intervene actively". This description is of the author not as activist—because an activist behaves reactionary—but the author as producer, one who creates the revolution field for and with the proletariat. The activist writer is counter revolutionary as that writer "feels his solidarity with the proletariat only in his attitudes, not as a producer." Then there is the 'hack writer' who within his bourgeoisie class utilizes "the productive apparatus... by improving it in ways serving the interests of socialism." Literature, photography, music and theatre are used as examples of such tools, their political functions being to show the world as it is.

Either tool can take either stance (bourgeoisie or proletariat). The photograph for instance can present a scene capitalizing on the image of a beautiful world; with a caption, however, it can be utilized by the producer author to tell a completely different story. In case of music, Hanns Eisler observes that "music without words gained importance under capitalism". Change is impossible without words, which then makes a concert of words added to music a political meeting. Words, however, have now been assimilated into the Capitalist culture and visuals have been utilized as a political tool to be added to the music. (But now visuals are also absorbed. So what is the next emergent smooth space for production and political action? Is it reverting to the epic theatre of Brecht, the re-emergence of the soapbox and it's interruption of our thoughts and actions in order to open room for new attitudes?)

The internet, a smooth space with no boundaries for interaction and information exchange is also a tool, with its political function being the absorbing of borders and nationalities and it's ultimate function as a production apparatus, as Benjamin puts it, an apparatus "which is able first to induce other producers to produce, and second to put an improved apparatus at their disposal. And this apparatus is better the more consumers it is able to turn into producers-that is, readers or spectators into collaborators." (The example of his time was Brecht's epic theatre.)

In The Smooth and the Striated, Delueze and Guattari talk of the constant shift from striated space to smooth space and back. Neither space can exist on its own, and one continually sets the stage for the other to spring up from within it. A rational, gridded city as an example of the striated, will always have in it the smooth space of organic neighbourhood growth, community groups and homeless drifters. The internet first serving as a point-A-to-B information exchange route (point-to-point movement being a characteristic of striated space as opposed to smooth space where points do not terminate a path), became a space for people to become producers, creating and sharing new information, activities and ideologies—Benjamin's description of the ideal production apparatus in the hands of the proletariat. However, as prescribed of organic and planned forces intermingling, the smooth space of the internet has bred a new striated space of 'social networking tools', tools which threaten the act of production.

With "social networking tools", such as facebook, we have stopped communicating directly with each other and instead 'update' our 'status' via 'wall posts'. We do not personally invite our friends with a phone call or email, but create an 'event' in the confines of the 'social networking tool' which our network of real-life friends may not learn of if they are not a part of that insular network. We don't express grief or even news of losing a grandparent other than by creating a status update that you are 'going to a funeral'. The empathic connections between members of a society are cut, and without the feelings of kinship, care, respect, etc. the human connections in a society are severed and social responsibilities to each other are lost.

Adorno and Horkheimer, in The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, point out that "No mention is made of the fact that the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest. A technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself. It is the coercive nature of society alienated from itself." We have become a smooth space of no-resistance, no production, no thought, no action, ready to be taken in by the controlled space of the anti-social tools.

These 'anti-social' networking tools have eliminated the theatre of face-to-face interaction and have removed words from the music of social engagement and of physically hearing voices and emotions resonate through bodies and space. The 'haptic' functions of the smooth are now only 'optical' functions of reading gridded information; our organic and boundless movement across the internet is placed in the striae of 'groups' we belong to; we are no longer producers, but are readers, consumers and employees of the machine of Capitalism.

Sun, Nov 9, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: rant, smooth space/striated space, facebook, anti-social networks
Sent to project: The Total Library

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Thoughts and Theories into Dreamspace

[Update: I added a bit more in my theories section. I just woke up—4:15am—from a horrible dream... I caused a major catastrophe playing with nuclear fireworks! I woke from feeling incredibly ashamed for causing it though I also die! The funny thing is that when I first wrote this post, I had also been awaken by a dream.]

I took a casual survey of a few neighbourhood bookstores and libraries and a quick glance at the bookshelf on the topic of 'dream' revealed numerous titles on dream interpretations from Native American and Egyptian to contemporary clairvoyants and religious books, and depending on the bookstore, some psycho-analytics of Freud and Jung were thrown into the mix which may spark interest to check out the section on psychology books. My favourite resource of click-mania through knowledge, Wikipedia, offered an impressive list of types of dreams and theories on dream on one page. For this post I am placing my dreams in only three categories and using them as examples, I am going to boldly add my theories of dream.

I am not going to delve into what theories I agree or do not agree with, because quite honestly, as in the case with theories and beliefs on death, no one really knows what they're talking about when it comes to dreams either. I do know one thing for sure, that keeping a dream journal is a good training tool for paying attention to dream details and remembering them. I've been using this site and have a log of seven years.

Dream One: Lucid Conversation
Dream Two: Event Prediction
Dream Three: Information Exchange

Lucid Conversation
Many experience lucid dreams, dreams we are fully aware of our 'dream self' and where we can control our thoughts and actions to achieve desired results. In the two examples below I am under control of my conversations.

While in highschool, I would hangout often with my dad's attorney. He was in some odd way my chain-smoking, bad-mouthed, smart-ass mentor. He had two young girls (one looked like Natalie Wood, the other was a cute fat one who I would never see without Cheetos). His wife was a nice lady, a schoolteacher...grade four I think. He died one December day in 1999, only 42. His body was found face-down clutching the rug in his fists as he was pulling himself to the counter where his heart medication was. Quite graphic and sad. By that time I had not seen him or his family in five years. Here is my dream from my log:

1 December 2001

i was in a green late 70s datsun. the car belonged to my dad's dead lawyer. we were having a conversation just like in real life. i told him i missed him and how i liked his raspy voice. he laughed at that; a good hearty, smokey laugh-you know the kind of laugh from too many cigarettes. i told him that i tried to call his wife on no-rooz two years ago, just a couple months after he had died, but she didn't answer the phone (i really did try calling her in real life, not in the dream). i told him that i wanted to tell her how sorry i am and that i think of her and the girls. i wanted him to know. he said it's okay, she didn't like me anyway. i thought in my dream and while we were driving that she was jealous of me spending so much time with him and i am taking a spot that were for his daughters. but that wasn't true so once again i tried to call her, this time in my dream. after i woke up i felt like i had really spent time with him. i know i did.

In the diner example, however, I experience the split persona of 'dream me' who has more control of the situation than 'sleep me'.

8 December 2003

I was in a diner with my uncle (mom's younger brother) and my boyfriend. My uncle and I were sitting across from each other by the window and my boyfriend was sitting next to him. It looked like the 101 Diner in LA, but authentic and old, not new and hip like the 101.

What I was about to tell my uncle was a lie. I knew in my conscious state and my dream state that it is a lie. But I didn't know why I was about to lie in my conscious state, so I let my dream me continue with the lie. I told my uncle that I am pregnant and I am expecting a little girl. I told him I want to name her Jasmine because it was his father favourite flower. They bloom at dawn and are most fragrant then. My grandfather would be up every morning, before sunrise, to exercise. He would pick the flowers and always have a fistful in the pockets of his pjs. My grandmother would also pick a small handful and always have it on his breakfast table. In our family, that flower always reminds us of him.

My uncle was happy and complimented me on my name choice.

The dream was over. The conscious, yet asleep me, is still wondering why the hell did I lie. But then I had a dream that followed it pretty soon.

I was sitting somewhere like that first diner... I am not sure if it was that same place or not... I didn't care. I didn't care because my Grandfather was sitting across from me. He looked much younger than I had ever seen him and much healthier. He was maybe in his early sixties. I knew him in his late seventies until he died at 83 or something. He was wearing a crisp white shirt and a tan suit. Tan and gray were his suit colours.

He was happy and smiling. We didn't say anything. We were just happy to see each other.

I knew why I had lied in the earlier dream... I just wanted to get his attention and let him know I love him and miss him.

Event Prediction
Different civilizations have used dreams as a means to decide whom to follow, what to do and where to go. What is known from ancient texts and religious stories on dream interpretation, is that these civilizations developed unique guides and references to the translation of the dream language (an identifiable source of Carl Jung's theory that dreams are a language with meaning). As with any language, the dream language can be learned either through repetition of dreams and the events within them, or by paying attention to dream events and finding their correlation with life events as one would do with learning metaphors in another language by comparing the known language to the foreign. An advanced interpretation comes from the combination of the two, repetition and relation, techniques I have used to interpret my dreams.

While having this dream I was in the US and my family were visiting Tehran for the summer. The dreamspace was a war scene and a US fighter jet was flying overhead.

2 September 1996

i am not sure where the location is but i am looking from a distance. i can see my family hanging out in a garden. the plane swoops down and drops a bomb.

I call my dad the next morning with an interpretation: keep an eye on my brother or sister (they're born in the US); one of them will do something harmful to the family. My dad called three days later and said my dream was fulfilled and everyone is okay. My little brother had found my grandfather's gun. It didn't have it's magazine clip so my 12 year-old brother thinks its safe and starts playing around pointing the gun to his head, aiming it around the house, pointing it to my mother's head who is taking a nap... then he places the gun on the pillow next to her and pulls the trigger. There was one bullet in the chamber.

Information Exchange
I decided on making this a category of its own because generally I have experienced this form of dream conversation and questioning taking place with a living person. The first part of the dream in the diner fits this category. That dream is more complex though as the living person has possibly been used to give information to a possibly dead person. (I should have asked my uncle if he had any particularly memorable dream involving my grandfather.)

I would call my grandmother quite frequently but it had been a couple months where I was calling to speak with her and my mother had a legitimate excuse every time—"She's staying with so-and-so uncle this week."; "She's in the hospital for a night or two because..."; "She's sleeping." Not once did it occur to me that she's lying... for the past two months. Logged dream:

18 September 2004

nona is in tehran visiting her family (in real life she is in tehran, not in dream). i see her and ask her "nona, have you seen maman joon? i haven't talked to her. how is she?" nona replies with a matter of fact tone "she's in the ground." i wake up and i know my grandmother is dead.

Now my theories:

1. Dreamspace is a parallel dimension
2. Dreams are a wormhole making possible the bending of spacetime
3. Dreamspace is the link between the physical life we know of and the life after death which we are dying to learn of.

The bombing dream, and numerous dreams within the same line, have lead to my theory of dreamspace being a parallel dimension. The events in the parallel dimension of dream have a logic (language) very different to that of the dimension where we are awake. It is the understanding of the logic of the parallel dimension that aids in dream interpretation. Being that parallel dimensions are possibilities of this dimension and that there is no concrete knowledge on the way time passes or corresponds between the dimensions, one can assume that either the dream events are taking place in slightly advanced time—which explains predictions and visions popular with ancient cultures—or the events have passed confirming experiences of déjà vu within dreams.

Considering the difference in the passage of time, and events jumping various points along the "time-line" the nature of time is questioned. Could scientists be over-looking an obvious medium for wormholes: our dreamspace?

My mother's aunt stayed with us for a month one summer. She was a bit over 4 feet tall, thick magnifying glasses which made her eyes half her face, super cute and in super pain from arthritis. I'd spend an hour with her every evening massaging her hands, arms and legs. A month later I had a dream where after massaging her arms, she turns around and very vividly wishes me a good fortune. She turns back and puts her head down to sleep. At the breakfast table the next morning I ask my mom if we can give her a call. She says "She died last night at 9pm."

Could the event in my dream have taken place a month ago but I only experienced it later? Same with the dream in which I have a conversation with my sister-in-law, Nona. Is that a conversation that actually takes place in real life, but within a different dimension of time whereas we do not experience it physically? Maybe the experiences of déjà vu in places, in conversations with people, etc. are a result of actually double experiencing events in this dimension and the parallel dimension. This is a glitch in timespace because if every event of each dimension were to be experienced we would go crazy with the irregular passage of time and happening of events. it would literally feel like dreams of running in place, in slow motion.

Posting my dreams here without anonymity is taking a toll on me. We tend to share dreams we are comfortable with in terms of how personal they are or are not, or what their silly level. I am not comfortable sharing my dreams. I actually have more examples to illustrate bending spacetime but I just can not bring myself to sharing them. In our culture dreams, however one sees the subject, reflect the dreamer and the reflection is more times than not a silly one. The website I mention at the beginning, The Collective Unconsciousness Project is an anonymous diary which makes it fun and easy to keep a dream log (everyone can browse the dream logs on TCUP).

The status of dreams and the dreamer in the circle of friends and society lead to thinking about two obstacles to dreams becoming wormholes: first, we have no control over when we dream and what we dream (otherwise we would avoid being placed in uncomfortable, terrifying, embarrassing situations), and second, though it is a collective experience and millions of people are dreaming at the same time, it is a random individual experience which is rarely shared afterward because it is personal or because it is "silly" and being silly is uncomfortable.

Actors—human or animal—are trained to exhibit behaviours, accents, emotions, etc. on demand. (That is silly too, yet we reward them for it.) What if we could be trained to close our eyes and dream on que? What if we could control where our dream takes place and who and what we encounter? If we can collectively share our dreams and be within each other's dreams, the dreamspace becomes a shared experience of travel at the very least. If dreams are collectively controlled and shared, I can not help wonder of the conditions of dreamspace having physical repercussions in real life. I have had many dreams which have affected me emotionally and therefore physically but these effects have been self-induced. If we open up dreamspace to others, we open another realm where we are subjected to other people's thoughts and actions as in everyday life. There is nowhere to escape each other.

Analyzing the time mess of the dream with my grandfather (dead) and uncle (living) point at the possibility of a medium space where the living and the passed can still mingle. (It is safer to rule out the dream with my great aunt as a time shift though, since it was only me and her in the same situation as numerous time before.) I am hesitant to venture further into this theory for many reasons and consider theory one and two as viable candidates for more study.

Mon, Sep 1, 2008  Permanent link

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Do you have the Time?

I am in Tokyo and it is a little past 5am. It's a little past 1pm in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles -8GMT
Tokyo +9GMT

5am in Tokyo is one hour brighter than 5am in Los Angeles at this time of the year. Regardless, we all more or less know what 5am and 1pm feel like, and 1pm in Tokyo can be as miserable as 1pm in Los Angeles. 5pm rush hour looks similar in most places; many children are sent to bed at 8pm; and most days 9am can be an un-godly hour for me to wake up whether in Los Angeles, Tehran or Tokyo. These times are essentially all the same.

Kinda boring.

The first place where the Sun rose in this millennium, local time, was on the International Date Line, all of which is in the Pacific Ocean. Even though the line makes some zigzags to the east, the place on the line where the Sun rose first is far south, near the Antarctic Circle, where the line is intersected by the terminator (day/night line). Here, the Sun dips just below the horizon and then rises again almost immediately at midnight local time. The longitude is 180° E exactly, and we take the local time to be 12 hours ahead of UT (atomic time). The southern limit to the terminator was at latitude 66° 3' S on January 1, 2000 and 66° 7' S on January 1, 2001. Both of these locations are in the extreme southern part of the Pacific Ocean with no land nearby.

"International Date Line, all of which is in the Pacific Ocean.... Both of these locations... with no land nearby."

Without argument—and because it is a little past 5am and little past my argument making time of day/night—I'll take this as a logical start point for dates. Now why not also start and end time right here and make only one time zone? 5am (05:00hrs) in Tokyo is also 5am in Los Angeles. 1pm (13:00hrs) in Los Angeles is also 1pm in Tokyo. The time for everyone is the same, but the feel is different. Good bye the meaning of time attached to a self-centered numbering system of 1884. Who is to decide that my 5am should be the same as theirs?

24 hours and 24 different possibilities of rush hour and bed time! Let me tell you, 13:00 in August, in Tokyo is very miserable, but imagine a mild early night at 13:00 in August, in Los Angeles. You don't want to experience a location for seasons only, but for time as well! What is 13:00 like in August in Buenos Aires?! What about 13:00 in January?!

Hello Time Tourism. We have 288 new reasons to visit other "times".

Tue, Aug 5, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: jabberwocky, Time, realization

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