Dagge is on always on time
Dagge was standing at the door of the reading room with a faraway look on his face, not totally aware of his current geodesic position, when Bic cleared his throat with intent.
Dagge snapped out of his day dream and said, ah, hello Bic.
Hello Dagge, where were you, said Bic.
Oh, Tingles is teaching me about audio engineering and I am trying to remember what is the frequency of, middle C, said Dagge. I could look it up I suppose, but I want to learn and remember and stop constantly looking things up on the phone.
Ah, the phoned, said Bic, I might have something of interest for you Dagge.
I told Dorothy about your concern of being a character in a story, said Bic.
Oh shit, why did you do that for, she will think I am a nutter. Dagge was looking every which way, mumbling, oh no, oh no.
Well, that is not true, said Bic, she does not think you are a nutter. Well initially, she might have thought it was an unusual thought.
Anyway, she has been here several times now to discuss the matter. Not about you of course, but about the authors of the culture we are a part of. Will I go on, said Bic, to a slightly agitated Dagge.
I suppose, said Dagge, if you must.
How about I start with something that is really easy to grasp, said Bic.
In the so-called Middle Ages of the western world, there were monks dedicated to writing out clearly the rules of behaviour for all members of the Christian world. These monks were celibate, mainly isolated from the life of most people, but were dictating social behaviour and claiming it was the directions from heaven.
A couple of centuries on and we can look back and say they were a lot of mixed-up males with little grasp on much at all. A bit sad for them, but really tragic for millions.
Fast forward to now, what do you think is currently happening in the author ship of culture, ask Bic.
Dagge had slipped back into his expression of a faraway look.
Finally, Dagge began to respond. When you put it like that Bic, social media and algorithms are the isolated crazy monks of now.
I think they play an enormous part, said Bic, but I think the religion of the Business School, PROFIT, is what they are based on.
Bic said, like the folks of the Middle Ages having their lives written for them by questionable monks and their often-kinky ideas. We are having our lives authored by a small group with ideas that are logical to them, but are not logical for the rest of our species. For that matter, most other species and life forms on the planet.
Dagge said, nothing has changed since ancient Egyptian pyramids. A couple of rocks at the top, supported by the mass. We are characters in a story and the authors have very definite ideas about what it is all about.
Bic said, I have adopted your perspective of being a character in a story Dagge and I have never felt so sane in all my life, said Bic.
Golly, the Business School would be very disappointed if they found out what had happened to their economic model after it was injected into my head, said a very self-satisfied Dagge.
Gut was not sure
Gut was not sure where he had heard about someone’s life being the work of an author, but he had been thinking about it lately.
Lately he had been carrying a little notebook and pen around with him and when he heard something interesting in an audio book, he would, press pause and note the position and write a little reminder note. When he reviewed his notes after a couple of weeks, he noticed a sort of connection with what was grabbing his attention.
Gut only listened to science audio books lately and enjoyed all sorts of subject areas.
Gut had no serious formal science education and assumed that he was probably missing all sorts of important details. He didn’t care though, because he felt he understood enough to find it all very interesting.
All of Gut’s friends were enjoying his interest in science, because he continuously came up with good conversation starters. Gut has always been a good communicator, so now in the new interactive age, he became recognized as a live interactor.
Dagge often said to Gut, you are better than social media Gut, you are LI “Live Interactor” and the battery doesn’t go flat. One day Dagge got a bit mixed up and said, Gut, you are LI, “Live Intelligence”.
Gut was convinced that an author was an interchangeable term with controller. An author writes a story and therefore, controls everything in the story. A controller did not have to be a human, it could be the weather, bacteria, in fact lots of things.
An example he would use to reinforce his idea would be, “Why is Joe looking Sick? Answer, oh, Joe got very drunk last night and his intestinal bacteria are still working their way through the residual alcohol in his intestine.
Drunken bacteria can cause all sorts of problems. It is one thing for the alcohol to be messing with neural circuits distributed by the blood, but when the intestinal bacteria are drunk, who knows what could result.
By the way, Gut often would say, so your brain is simply a lot of circuits connected by switches, a bit like a computer processor, okay. Then, what is a mind?
No one ever answered Gut’s rhetorical question. He knew quite well why they didn’t answer, simple, no one knew.
Religions, politicians, circus clowns, ladies of the night, school teachers, television news readers, all know very well how to manipulate people’s emotions, but no one knows what a mind is. Not even scientists, who get to cut up lots of brains and examine them very closely.
Gut is trying to figure out what a mind is. That does not mean for one minute, he doesn’t have an opinion. He simply is not game enough to express his opinions.
However, he did say to Tingles one day, that it could be possible that the author of our lives, is our mind.
After he said it, he spent days after wishing he hadn’t said it, because he realized he did not know what a mind is.
The definite distinction between a computer and a human is a computer can be shut down and rebooted, any time. Once a human is shut down, that’s it, kaput, no more. No rebooting, it is all over.
When the scientists remove the pickled brain from the cadaver, you don’t hear one of them say, hit the reset button will you please, Meg.
No; you don’t, because there isn’t a reset button, kaput, finished.
The computer needs to be feed data and have a program to process that data. No program, then, there is only the whirring of the cooling fan and the electricity bill.
Gut does not understand artificial intelligence either, in fact, he sometimes thinks intelligence of any kind is as rare as rocking horse shit.
A machine can be built and programmed to perform a function. Turn off the electricity, a dumb lump of stuff. There has never been a report of an aeroplane flying along on automatic pilot and an announcement comes out of the PA system, would that screaming child in seat forty-nine B shut up, you are really annoying me. This could put this flight in jeopardy.
There are reports of air stewards being over heard in the galley saying things like, that little brat in forty-nine B is really trying my limits of tolerance. Pity, we can’t give it a stiff drink.
Therefore, Gut shudders, when he poses the question to himself.
Well, my good fellow Gut, what is intelligence and are you aware of any sign of it in your mushy grey matter?
Get off my back, you dam questioning voice in my head, Gut yells out.
Gut doesn’t really have an internal abusive commentary going on in his head. He didn’t really yell out anything either. This could have happened, but it did not.
Gut has a feeling, that intelligence is the collection of everything he has ever been exposed to. He knows where he got the idea from. Bic told him that we are all mobile libraries, only, some people have undeveloped cataloguing systems and cannot sort out whether they are Arthur or Martha.
Gut does not get paranoid, unless it is justified, of course. So, when he had another thought, he did not worry about all the security cameras he could see, using any mind tracking software to examine his current train of thought.
The mind, he paused for a moment before moving on with his thought process. Does the mind actually work the way, that the techno jocks explain how artificial intelligence operates?
Is the human mind an evolutionary developed cataloguing system of the received information, he pondered.
If the human mind is similar to a mobile library and it is all down to how well our cataloguing system has developed, then, that could be a better explanation, than, comparing humans to semiconductors in a plastic box with fantasy graphics on a glass screen.
Imagine that, Gut thought, people going to a plastic surgeon to have a glass screen implanted on their forehead, so the world can see the interesting graphics they can render in their brains. Oh, your graphics are fuzzy, might be a comment.
At least it would be more interesting than tattoos. You could hope for the graphics to change occasionally.
Gut began to expand on this idea of the mind resembling the cataloguing system of a library, then, he thought, the internet and social media.
Even though his thought process hadn’t caught up, he felt a shudder, because he had a gut feeling where this is going.
The internet is the result of connecting libraries through the telephone system. The initiators digitize the information in the libraries for what they believed to be good reasons.
The library cataloguing system was perfect for this purpose.
What happened, it was appropriated by Business School graduates and renamed google. Google did not compensate the libraries and neither do they to this day.
The Business School graduates saw profits far greater than their calculators could count. So, as they corporatized the internet with the help of adolescent males who had not found out about things boys and girls can do with each other.
The zeros, they finally realized could be infinite with digital technology and the discovery by adolescent boys meant they could sell a connection to everyone. This connection is called a smart phone and social media. Pornography proved very popular with these boys in the early unregulated internet days. They didn’t know much about girls, the adolescent boys that is.
The reason that the term smart phone caught on is, because of the unlimited resources of information, could become an advertising billboard, that could be exploited for huge profits. The psychical phone is believed to be much smarter than the users.
Gut was feeling over whelmed with his thoughts.
He couldn’t stop thinking about it all.
The smart phone can connect any one to almost all the information ever collected and preserved by humans in a digital format.
What happens though, if it is filtered by those who have enough resources to limit the average punter to only looking at limited amount of information and to be constantly exposed to advertisements for consumer products and services.
Gut thought, what a waste of something that could be of huge benefit for humanity, to be reduced to jingle junk.
Being in the jingle business himself, he felt sad that he is a party to this wastage.
Gut jumped back a few steps, he thought, the author, who is it.
The Business School graduates; are bean counters. As long as they are counting, they are happy. Infinite zeros, they have found heaven on earth.
The adolescent boys with the social media apps; who are yet to find out how much fun you can have with girls. Well, they probably got too lucky too young and will manage to go on as boring people who can afford to employ a publicist to make their lives sound interesting.
The mega rich; they were born into wealth and hate everybody, including themselves, because they live their lives in a gilded cages and have no need to be toilet trained.
The ambitious status seekers; they are basically harmless, because they once had to stand in front of a mirror many times through the day to reassure themselves of their own wonderfulness. With the smart phone they can look at themselves on the screen while they beam their greatness to the less fortunate.
The governments of the world; they play catch up and try not to offended anyone who is more powerful than they are. This includes other governments and multinationals who are bigger than most governments.
The People; Gut had come to the conclusion, that in order for people to survive, at some level, they needed to enslave themselves to someone or something. From the very wealthiest, who need others to protect them and provide a relative position to ensure their wealth. To the very poorest, who sell themselves for pennies to survive.
When someone once said we are born equal, that is what was meant. The useless dependent human baby remains dependent for their entire lives.
Gut realized that we are all authors to varying degrees. Not only the living, but all those who have preceded the current living humans.
Through evolutionary development, to writing and recording events and history.
Through DNA passed on from generation to generation. Bigotry to love and kindness passed on through cultures.
The major influencer, Gut thought, is ignorance. How the species would be much better off if ignorance was adopted universally as the normal state of everyone.
I know very little and the more I know for sure, the more I know I don’t know.
The Mind of People
Hello Dorothy
Bic was happily lost in the history of ancient Rome when Dorothy walked into the reading room and said, hello Bic, how are you today.
Bic dusted himself off and returned to the present time. Dorothy, I am well and yourself, said Bic.
I am as good as an aging librarian can be, said Dorothy with a big smile.
Dorothy said, as a person who has been professionally involved in words for longer than I can remember, this idea of your friend Dagge being a character in a story has really upset my little apple cart. Not in a bad way of course. I simply can not stop thinking about it.
Bic said, Thomas Thud was a great find. Who would have thought anyone would think someone, would associate authors with psychopaths.
I have moved on from mister Thud, said Dorothy.
I have started thinking about how colonial empires break the continuity of indigenous people’s culture by replacing their language with the language of the colonial power.
So, the idea of an author controlling lives is not so farfetched at all.
Bic, what language is currently dominating the human population now, asked Dorothy.
Well, I would not call it English, but it is generally accepted as the definition of what we speak, said Bic.
I am going to be really brave here Bic and say this, said Dorothy. Which ever nation or nations lay claim to this current dominant language, are in fact laying claim to the world.
Dorothy went on; therefore, I claim that who control the dominant nation or nations, is the author that Dagge is worried about.
It is not one author, but authors, are writing the story of our lives, said Dorothy.
Bic said, that makes a lot of sense in Dagge’s case, because he thinks the monks from the Business School are running the world and through their total control with business management practices, they are controlling every institution, even the old religions.
Dorothy said, Dagge has stumbled upon the very essence of what is the current dominant religion of the most humans on this planet. No wonder we are in so much trouble as species.
Bic said, goodness, once it was a bunch of very confused celibate monks living in isolation writing about how we should behave. What happened, we ended up with sexually confused males transmitting their troubles onto the greater population.
Now, the authors are a bunch of bean counters and if they cannot balance the books, then look out, no dinner for the children, said Bic.
The author is not in heaven. The authors are here on earth, right amongst us, said Dorothy.
What will we do Dorothy, said Bic.
Well, if we barricade the library to stop the bean counters from destroying it, then the public can’t get in to read liberating literature. If we remove the doors, then it could be destroyed by an unmitigated barbarian invasion, said Dorothy.
Identifying the author is enough for me today, Bic, I had better go an do my shift on the desk, said Dorothy. I think I will have a quiet, reflective mental breakdown, Dorothy, my mind feels like it is going to short circuit, said Bic.
What did Watt say
Watt had been a regular visitor at the library lately and he didn’t always stop in and say hello to Bic. He did always seem to know when Dorothy was on the front desk and always had a chat with her.
Bic was not a busy body, but he was curious and he wanted to find out what, Watt was up to.
What are you researching Watt, Bic asked politely.
It is for my grandad Bongo, he was brought here as a child. He knows little about his family history, or even if he has a history. His mother worked long hours and his older sister raised him until he was old enough to work. He worked in the daytime and learnt to drum with his friends at night.
Dorothy is helping me to find my way through the records. She is very clever, Bic. I wouldn’t tell her any bullshit; she will find you out.
Bongo is really happy with what I have shown him so far. Bic, Watt said, it is all about knowing where to look.
Bic said, that is really good Watt. Are you finding your history interesting.
I am Bic, I started out looking for a few things Bongo always wanted to know. Then, when I realized it was my history as well, I got right into it.
All the different types of libraries are so important for keeping records in a way that they can be accessed easily. Bic said, without libraries, this whole digital age probably would not have happened.
Google should hand over a good percent of its earning to libraries to ensure records are kept and are accessible into the future.
Google will one day be seen as the pirates of this period. They are profiting from a service they did not create or maintain. Bic said, I believe I am being polite, by calling them pirates.
Watt said, Bic, I am slowly becoming aware of so many things since I started coming to the library.
If you get a chance Watt, ask Dorothy about the different types of libraries and their importance as repositories of information. She knows far more than I do, said Bic.
There was an English author called G. Orwell, who was popular in the last century and he wrote, “he who controls the past, controls the future”.
With the advent of the internet and only a few individuals controlling these operations, what G. Orwell said, has taken on an importance way beyond what he intended, said Bic.
Watt said, the other day, Dagge said to me while I was looking at something on my phone, be careful Watt, the authors of our lives have full control of that thing.
Watt went on, I have no idea what Dagge was on about, but it did give me the he-bee-gee-beees. Not Dagge, but what he said.
Bic went into a considered silence, then said. Dagge has felt his existence is really a character in a story. The author has determined who he is, what role he plays in the story and therefore his fate.
At first, I thought, Dagge has lost it and it won’t be long and he will be on medications until his health insurance runs out, then, probably off to some park and a shortened life expectancy.
I told Dorothy about it and over a period of time she came up with an explanation. She basically said, a dominant group, that is controlled by an even smaller group, control, fashion, frame the culture we exist in. They therefore, author our lives.
I told Dagge this and after he got over being cranky with me for telling Dorothy, he said, that is it, social media and algorithms are the author.
Bic said, I totally agree with him. If there is a control on the information you receive, then, your life is being authored by those who determine what that information is.
Sorry about this lengthy rave Watt, said Bic.
Not at all Bic, we are in the public library, keep going.
Bic said, on these shelves are numerous books detailing human history. Many of these societies held strong beliefs. When you read about them now, they all have one thing in common.
A small group at the top have easy charmed lives, while the masses usually exist in horrid circumstances. There are great celebrating shows put on where all are invited to see how wonderful everything is. Bic, added, does this sound familiar watt.
Watt wanted to say something, but in silence with a definite feeling of the he-bee-gee-beees.
Eventually, Watt said, you are starting to make sense Bic. As a person who earns a modest living making jingles, I can see your point about our lives being written by an author.
Watt went on, I really love my grandad Bongo and believe he is basically a good person, However, if I end up being a grandfather myself, I wonder what my grand kids would think about me. Will there be a new power in control of the culture and will they think I am a complete and utter nutter.