Hawks In Radiation

Although I didn't grow up on a farm, I spent parts of my life in the country, away from city roads and electrified lights.

We all have a history.  And believe it or not, all of our histories are worth talking about.

I consider my life rather uneventful - I doubt you'll find much mention of me in the history books but maybe in a few entries in local newspapers.

That's what this here thing called the Internet has given us, a voice for all the people and all our histories and mysteries and un/conventional lives.

Not all of us are computer users, of course.  Some, a few, remember the earliest days of electric computing machines.  I remember the days of setting bytes and writing them to discrete memory locations by hand. 

Most of the computer users out there don't even think of themselves as computer users anymore, pressing keys on phones more complicated than computers that went to the Moon and back.

The less a computer acts like a computing machine and more like a simple extension of our thoughts, the more people become attached to the idea of a computer as part of their daily lives.

The ultimate noncriticising companion.

As the writer/director of Moon showed, computers are here to help.

We are social creatures, prone to social hierarchy behaviour - aggressiveness, timidness, cooperating and coercing [on a side note, the proper language student in me says I should not mix word forms - too bad, call it quasipoetic licence].

Religions have demonstrated our need to have an all-seeing, comforting, advising substance available to us when we don't have resources readily available to solve problems.  We know we did not create ourselves and thus do not have complete control of the conditions that provide us life - how we see the universe as it truly exists or was created depends primarily on our cultural upbringing, which may or may not provide insight into the facts of life.

However, we have collectively created this instantly-available substitute for religion - the technological development that brought us ubiquitous computing/networking.

We fear and/or embrace this omnipotent technology in different amounts - highway robbery and piracy a common theme for all living things that might make us apprehensive at times, especially for "magic" technology we don't understand.

Life is not perfect.  Technology never provides exactly what we really want, although it may approximately fulfill our dreams.

By definition of being a writer with no strong passion for a particular subject, I am generalist.  I let my thoughts wander from one walk of life to another and then to nonliving things and nothing at all.

To understand what the Book of the Future shows me, especially on topics I know little or nothing about, I expand my knowledge when and where I can.  Not everything I study is interesting to me personally but I stay focused on the big picture - the fact that I want to see the future, good or bad, and write about it.

Thus, every life of yours is important to me.  Also, the lives of the ants making a trail across the driveway for their colony, the various forms of flies buzzing around (including the wide range to which the crane fly belongs), the bees, the heat pouring out of my attic, the suds at the bottom of my beer bottle, the sunlight making shadows on the tent over my car and the sound of my neighbour's lawnmower.

I try (and often fail) to give equal importance to everything around me.  We live on a planet of "eat and be eaten," so equality of life is a subjective subject subject to interpretation.

Act on what you believe.

A striped, juvenile broad-headed skink scurries across the concrete, a millipede not too far away.

Gnats, mosquitoes, and sweatbees find me interesting in their own way.

The dried hulk of a larva casing, perhaps a cicada, dries in the sun.

Do I know how lucky I am to have this moment with the creatures around me to write about?

A dragonfly passes through, nothing here to take much notice of.

Some of us can plow a straight row and some of us can work out complex mathematical problems in our thoughts.

Can I say that the insects here before me are equal to the mobile phone, laptop computer and portable phone within my reach?

The hornet might kill me, the sweatbees make my skin swell up and the gnats like to climb into my ear canals.

Fame skews our perspective.  I don't know a person named Dr. Hawking but technology can push popular media reports onto the flat surface of this readable display and let me read about the words reported to have come from the thoughts of a Dr. Stephen Hawking who lives somewhere else on this planet.

I am neither a fan nor a detractor of Stephen H. but I do pay attention to his words when they pop up occasionally.

I'm just as interested in the people who've told me about their lives in the country the past few days (but I've agreed not to disclose personally identifiable information about them so I won't speak here specifically about their lives).

Who or what is the companion you carry with you everyday?  Is it a god or gods in your thoughts?  Is it a portable device like a computer or mobile phone?  Is it a child or pet?

I carry you in my thoughts, whoever or whatever you are.  I accept you for who you are and what you choose to do to stake your claim on (or near) this world.  This technology we call the Internet facilitates the method for how I see what you're doing but whether you're here or not, you're still my friends and companions.

Don't let technology fool you that it's a substitute for true companionship.  Technology is a tool, an extension of your actions and thoughts.

The wasp flying overhead may not be able to describe time travel through a wormhole - the flickering image of escaping attic heat on the tentscreen behind it - but without the wasp, the heat, the tentscreen, you and Dr. Hawking, I wouldn't be here as I am.