Category Archives: manuscript

the turk

Posted on by October 5, 2012
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manuscript-day 209 of 100 The history of mechanical calculators is far more outbranching, and the whole story is important for understanding, that what a computer does and is based on, is mathematics, and mathematics only. The devices presented so far—from the ‘Antikythera Mechanism’ to Hahn’s calculator—are of tremendous importance for humankind in general, as history then shows. Accordingly they fascinate the elite-circle of scientists of their times. But they harbour no direct meaning for those not ‘in-the-know,’ because in the end, they can ‘just’ calculate, ‘nothing more.’ They are not programable and thus can not combine their calculation powers in … Continue reading →

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alienist

Posted on by October 4, 2012
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manuscript-day 208 of 100  ‘Prior to the twentieth century, persons suffering from mental illness were thought to be “alienated,” not only from the rest of society but from their own true natures. Those experts who studied mental pathologies were therefore known as alienists,’ historian and writer Caleb Carr clarifies in a preliminary note to his 1994 thriller novel. In ‘The Alienist’ Laszlo Kreizler, psychiatrist, hunts down a serial killer—the story taking place in a hardly gaslit New York City of the year 1896. Not only Theodore Roosevelt makes a cameo appearance, but also Franz Boas, American anthropology’s founding father of … Continue reading →

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enemy dispenser

Posted on by October 4, 2012
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manuscript-day eleven of 100  Overlay text points me to a decidedly surreal element, a large switch, its socket pasted to a brick wall. An enamel sign above it reads ‘enemy dispenser.’ Gathering all my guts I am stepping up to the oversized button and ‘engage.’     Sudden excited shouting in the street. Outside my field of vision (FOV) a yet unknown number of bad guys has spawned. While I am hastily turning around a gun cracks. Blood sprays, the stereo headphones relay a pressed ‘Ugh!’ to my brain. Payne’s way of quitting him being hit. Panic stricken, having no … Continue reading →

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raining games

Posted on by October 5, 2012
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manuscript-day four of 100 Yesterday night, while hunched over his C-64, absorbedly somersaulting over compact droids while running along platforms, hard banging against the door of his flat wrenched him out of immersion.     ‘Open that door immediately,’ a commanding voice shouted from the staircase outside his apartment. The order was preceded by the incomprehensible, but nevertheless authoritative yelling of a name, and of a likewise yelled address resembling the one of a nearby police station. Already close to wetting his pants, picturing himself in jail for having committed the arch-crime of copyright infringement at least a zillion times, … Continue reading →

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warped visions

Posted on by October 5, 2012
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manuscript-day three of 100 Imagine an unspecified European traveller voyaging into an equally unspecified remote area, there coming into contact with the even more unspecified indigenous population. The society he visits lacks scripture, but pictorial representation is abound. With an instant camera the traveller takes pictures of the landscape, the village, and of his hosts.     On presentation of the pictures the locals give to understand that they do not recognize anything. The visitor is flabbergasted, but after some explaining from his side, the villagers manage to recognize the to them familiar sceneries as represented. Time passes, the people … Continue reading →

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ignition—ablaze rewritten

Posted on by October 4, 2012
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manuscript-day two of 100    My having an appointment here and now renders the situation odd. Else there would be little wonder in the downtown Manhattan spaghetti joint being perfectly deserted at that time of night. Way past the graveyard shift, uncanny twilight, floor covered by classical black and white checker tile, rows of lavishly upholstered benches, matching diner-style tables squeezed in-between, an enormous mahogany bar in the back, and nobody to be seen.     A cliché setting not missing its target, bringing home the menacing ambience quite nicely. Just if I would not be nervous and frightened enough … Continue reading →

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penthouse

Posted on by October 3, 2012
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manuscript-day one of 100    Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling? —M. C. Escher The skies outside the floor to ceiling glass panes resemble all but white noise on television. Nothing of a dead channel here, they are as brilliant as two high-end TFT flatscreens can render. Screens which are quite alive—so much so that they can switch from absolute black hole darkness to blazing supernova white, and the other way round, in less than two milliseconds. Hence the nocturnal nonsky appears as a star-speckled perfect black. The crisp vista of the metropolis skyline … Continue reading →

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manuscript

Posted on by October 5, 2012
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During the last days the process of writing the dreaded book, which now definitely will be christened “maxmod—an ethnography of cyberculture” (note the humbleness, it’s an ethnography, not the ethnography), was going really well. I’ve got a run. Recently I read an interview with Philip Roth—he produces two pages of manuscript a day, up to ten pages on exceedingly good days. Yesterday I managed to write three and a half pages, one page of those falling into a hard to write section. If I can keep up yesterday’s pace, I’ll be finished in a hundred days. So, in order to … Continue reading →

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ablaze

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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  If it wasn’t for my having an appointment here and now, there’d be little wonder in the downtown Manhattan spaghetti joint being perfectly deserted at that time of night. Way past the graveyard shift, uncanny twilight, floor covered by classical black and white checker tile, rows of lavishly upholstered benches, matching diner-style tables squeezed between them, an enormous mahogani bar in the back, and nobody to be seen. A cliché setting. But the cliché doesn’t miss its target and brings home the menacing ambience quite nicely. Just if I’d not be nervous and frightened enough yet. Alas, there’s no … Continue reading →

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