Analog Aesthetics

Why is it that the greyest days in winter bring more cheer and productivity than even the sunniest afternoons? I suppose I'm a sucker for being able to stay in my apartment all day reading and working without feeling guilty for missing out on the gorgeous weather. Or maybe I'm just crazy.

I'm sitting in on some very interesting lectures this semester, one of them being a course entitled "American Mediascapes." What I've learned in this course thus far has been difficult to wrap my head around, toying with the theories of Humberto Maturana and Niklas Luhmann for radical constructivism. Luhmann felt that a medium (or here also: media) is something that can be formed but does not have its own form, something loosely coupled with form, like the alphabet. By themselves each letter means next to nothing, but in a certain form they can mean volumes. He also argues that letters, like in this example, makes a digital distinction: either the letter is or isn't (a distinction of meaning for each letter is, of course, made by society, but its existence is a given). The medium of sound, however, is more analog, but you must still make a digital distinction of those sounds to pick out individual letters, furthering communication. Here the computer is viewed as the super medium, as it can replicate all other analog media, often to a degree that is difficult to perceive as different from the analog. Of course experts and people like myself will argue that the difference is easily perceivable, i.e. ANALOG IS BETTER.

I learned today I subscribe to the Utopia of Analog. Population: me + you.

And in celebration of our quest for perfection, I leave you with a wonderful poem by Pablo Neruda, translated (because my Spanish is awful) to English by Stephen Kessler:

Oneness

There's something dense, united, sitting in the background,
repeating its number, its identical signal.
How clear it is that stones have handled time,
in their fine substance there's the smell of age,
and water the sea brings, salty and sleepy.

Just one thing surrounds me, a single motion:
the weight of rocks, the light of honey,
fasten themselves to the sound of the word night:
the tones of wheat, of ivory, of tears,
aging, fading, blurring,
come together around me like a wall.

I toil deafly, circling above my self,
like a raven above death, grief's raven.
I'm thinking, isolated in the depths of the seasons,
dead center, surrounded by silent geography:
a piece of weather falls from the sky,
an extreme empire of confused unities
converges, encircling me.


Also: send me your comments on Intelligent Design. I'm in the mood to get defensive.
Get on the mic!