Boston (Tangent)

This is a complete tangent, but "Midnight in a Perfect World" from DJ Shadow's Endtroducing is the shit.

The Wikipedia page linked to above is one of the reasons the internet if awesome. The sample sources shown there used to be hosted on a website with a constantly changing web address. The only way that you would know how to find the updated site was to subscribe to the associated email list. Now, with the ability of many users to update the page, there isn't really a way to stop the information from being shown, save for some sort of hard core government shutdown. Even then it might not be possible. As the information base gets connected, people who know the original artists (David Axelrod, for example was dope as hell) will fill in more info and then info about the songs and the like. That is a very interesting spiral of interrelation. The dark side of it is that the more esoteric the information, the fewer people are knowledgeable enough to edit it. This isn't usually a huge deal, but in the case of wikipedia, it is not everyone's hobby. Perhaps it will be at some point, or even find its way to a more omnipresent catch-all for information. If Wikipedia had an unlimited storage capacity, would they loosen restrictions for pages about people? Could it then become the base internet portal through which we view the world?

Imagine it, a web page is created when you're born. Your parents give that website to everyone you meet as a child so that everyone you've ever met can add to your page. When you get old enough, you can edit your page to link to things you're involved in and interested in. To keep it even, half of the page could be property of the individual, and the other half could be property of the community at large. As you link to pages about things that interest you and people you know, you can edit their pages. This way, you're involved with the pages of things which interest you.

Wait a second, doesn't this all sound a lot like life? You live, you have an internal consciousness, there are external consciousnesses around you, you are able to change/remain yourself while others change/keep their opinions of you and during your life you can be involved in those things that interest you.

I know it's a crazy fantastic scenario, but if you consider the things that you do online and align them with the physical activities replaced by the tappy-tapping of fingers on a keyboard, and then think of the shock of the telephone before that, you might agree that it is not an impossible path to eventually travel. Not that it is likely, but that it could follow from the events unfolding now.

In any case, when my eyes glaze over on a car ride or on a bye round, these are the things that flood through my head. When people ask me what I'm thinking about or what's on my mind, this is an example of why I often say "nothing." This was difficult enough to get down in typed form, extemporaneously, my train of thought will all but assuredly be derailed.