The Principle Book of Social Uncertainty Possibilities
They are waves of judgment
. . crashing against our faces
. . . . . . now everyday—
. . . . . . and when you used to be able to hide from it
. . hide from the silent fuck you’s of the street
now it invades your bedroom
through a glowing portal.
#
The waves are overlapping:
a social superposition
We’re the flashy new electrodrones (electrons)
existing partly [and separately]
in all our particular theoretically possible states:
the state of face
the state of the instant
the state of the twit
simultaneously
much as the clouds of “i”
gather “positive” superconnections.
: )
The Heisen[Zucker]berg [social] uncertainty principle states:
that at any given time, an electr[odrone’s]on’s speed
and location cannot be determined:
it will already have [refreshed]—
Be quick about it—Let us catch up—
. . . . . . FOMO!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . ( ~ (—: FOMOing at the mouth—that squeeing infospout :—( ~ (
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We must change something—any thing—any detail—
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .We must post something different—
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “I AM EATING CHEESE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IN BED, AND I CAN TELL YOU THIS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I LOVE DAH INTERNET!!!!!!!!”
Otherwise we cannot live up to quantum [social] expectations—
which begs the question: do subatomic particles socialize?
: (
As of 2012, Facebook generates 180 petabytes of data a year.
One pettybyte is enough to store the DNA of the entire population of the USA,
while cloning them twice.
According to a futurist, Kurzweil,
[who electroprophesizes that the singularity approaches:
wherein we becometh over-loaded with spiritually-wise machines]
the capacity of a human being’s functional memory [if you’re willing to hold that much]
is estimated at 1.25 terabytes
Meaning that one pettybyte
holds the memories of 800 human beings
It’s estimated a human body holds 100 trillion cells
If one bit equals one cell [1 or 0, plant or animal]
then the pettybyte holds the cells for 90 people
and at the total absorption rate of 45 bodies
and 400 minds a day,
Facebook brings to us the higher exaltations of the exa, zetta, yottabyte
The Yoda-byte: . . . . . . “PATIENCE YOU MUST HAVE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . my young padawan.”
Before you become a posthuman god
. . you must suffer before judgment
0:)
1 out of 3 users
. . responded with resentment triggers
While 48% of quitters
. . did such on grounds of privacy invasion
. . and only 6% said they were addicted.
The first step to recovery
[of lost data [or of time]]
is to admit that we are powerless
and that our lives have become unmanageable
[without instant messaging [or the space to reminisce]]
:-/
Given the nature of estrangement—
psychology has given us 4 ways
to deal with the impact of being unfriended:
; )
. . . . . . At age 102, Ivy Bean, of Bradford, England joined FB in 2008, making her one of the oldest people ever on FB. At the time of her death in July 2010, she had 4,962 friends and more than 56,000 followers on Twitter whom could each follow her approaching death through ongoing status updates.
. . . . . . Asked why she did it and why people we’re so into her, she said:
. . . . . . “Everybody’s got to get their 15 megabytes of fame somehow!”
. . . . . . Followed by a
. . . . . . : )
. . . . . . little did she know by the age of 104,
. . . . . . her body and mind were composed of 12.868 terabytes
. . . . . . (that is if she had the memory for this)
. . . . . . and that we still don’t know the data limit (nor plan) of her spirit
. . . . . . nor do we have a live feed
. . . . . . on the weighing of her heart
. . . . . . in the land of the dead
. . . . . . wherein we would tag her corpse
. . . . . . and comment: “Fuck Yea! No FOMO here! This geezer rocks!
. . . . . . [She gets us! She gets what it is to be human!]”
. . . . . . We all hope the divine like
. . . . . . passes well over her accounts
. . . . . . set to memoriam
#1#0#both
The video game of the future
is messaging upon us:
like this
and repost on fifty close friends’ walls
at a million likes
who knows whats possible!
101110001010101010101010101010
101110001010101010101010101010
101110001010101010101010101010
101110001010101010101010101010
101110001010101010101010101010
RE: tl;dr
Behind Opened Doors
My brother told me a story about cookies.
Some self-made, high middle class thirty-year-old
who lived in a ritzy almost condo apartment complex
made enough cookies for everyone in the building—
then he went door to door trying to hand them off
and met, shall we say,
a lack of acceptance.
One neighbor said, like did many others in similar terms:
. . . . . . “We don’t want to know you
. . . . . . just like we’d expect you
. . . . . . not to want to know us.
. . . . . . So you and your cookies can fuck off.”
*
We’re slipping away from each other.
It’s a scientific fact shrunk to quantum level.
68.3% of the universe is hypothesized to be dark energy.
We have no idea as of yet what dark energy is made from
but we know what it’s doing—
. . . . . . It’s . .yanking . . everything . . . apart
. . . . . . Eventually . it leads . . to . . . a . . . “Big . . Freeze”
. . . . . . Where . . . ever . y . per son . , . which . is . . to say . part . icle . . . . . . ,
. . is. . . . . . . . . . . . s o . . . . . . . . . .fa . r. . . . . . . . . . . . flun. . . . . g . . . from . . . eachother
. . . . . . . . every. . . . . . . . . . . . thi . . . . n. . . . . . g. . . . . sto . . ps. . . . . m . o . v . i . n . . g
*
A fellow collegiate peer held a door open
for me today. It’s not uncommon,
actually it seems the prescribed act to do.
It happens all the time, simultaneously around the world,
3,678 doors were just opened, and 8,931 people went through them,
I do it too, a door held for ten seconds for the people behind you,
a foot between the elevator door to cramp in a last body,
a friendly reminder to the bus driver, someone is sprinting behind the bus—
While it might not be appropriate to talk to this person,
(I’ve got my ipod on; I’m on my smart phone with my mother; I’m texting)
I can definitely hold the door open for them.
*
I heard from a Japanese exchange student, studying English in Vancouver,
as we spoke on a traveling bus in a rudimentary English of gesture and miming
bridging unknown words with reconstructed strings of simpler words
mitigating the broken abstractions with head nods and much grinning:
That in Japan, if you see someone you know in public
it is proper to dip your head down to your phone
and ignore their presence
*
As I’m walking through the sliding doors of my grocery store,
I realize the foundational power I have towards strangers
has been stolen from me.
And I start shopping at stores
where the doors are not automatic.
*
It is said that the number of likes
you receive on Facebook
for posting a narcissistic photo of yourself
is directly correlated in quantity
to the strength of social anxiety
you will feel when treading out
into the non-networked world.
*
I often wonder about the term “private property”
and if Marxists were insisting with a fervent glee
that on the abolishment of this practice:
that everyone can now walk through everyones’ doors—
sleep in our garages, in our beds, on our lawns,
talk to us in the morning over coffee
and we’d might as well go see who lives in every house
and apartment, in the next ten square blocks
for we’ve never met them,
and we’ve still got some coffee we can share,
Bring the thermos, won’t you Emma,
It was Karl, right, could you pull the cookies out of the oven?
How much larger a city would be!
If we could go through the portals
of everyone’s private lives
and enter their inner fears
with our own boldly shining
and irreverently ready to have a conversation
about the meanings of “private property” “in society”
or just as easily: “cosmic consciousness”
and “the fate of the universe”
*
Science has been attempting to disqualify
happenstance as an actual phenomena of the universe:
because they’re afraid what might happen if they don’t.
For a theory of everything would prove
that we’re made of smaller particles than we thought—
and they happen to be separating
*
It is often said, that the world is shrinking
for we can communicate
and acclimate
to every country in the world
via the web,
but then people just watch porn
and find a favorite downloadable television show.
Please remember to like someone’s photo on Facebook.
*
We all understand good deeds.
They’re meant to be quick and easy
and expected.
They may be getting smaller
and farther apart
but isn’t the whole universe?
And isn’t it our choice
to pull it back together
The door’s open stranger—
The Vast Distances
The distance to the moon: 238,900 miles
The distance across the city I live in: 3,830 blocks
The distance to social gratification: unknown abstract directions
The distance of dream: the composite measure of reality
The distance across the United States (Neah Bay, WA to Eastport, ME): 3,586 miles
The distance between every human being: unknown ineffability
The distance to the sun: 92,960,000 miles
The distance between two people: two heads, two hearts, & two souls
The distance to Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our own: 24,792,710,570,269.63 miles
The distance consciousness travels after death: unknown mystic hypotheses
The distance it takes light to travel in a year: 5,870,000,000,000 miles
The distance humanity will travel: unknown residuum
I feel a vast distance between me and others—
I’m mostly thinking of women here
that I’d like to know in more intimate ways.
I’m willing to bridge this distance
and see what we might see
at the high arch of this bridge—
where we may slip or slump and tumble down
back to our prospective sides
or linger at the peak:
it’s all about stepping towards the precipice.
I’m writing poems online by request
some are to people in loving couples
whom cannot express their love
so they hire me to for five bucks
(3.92 of which I get)
to e-compose what I feel is not cliché to them
but is to me—
for if I was in love—
I would never search the net in doubt of its lush multivalent effervescence!—
It would level novels and chip chapbooks from granite
It would burst twisted snapping readiness
from all the central cathedral ventricles, phantasmagoric rivers
of wit melded libido, caressing…
And I could continue—
but why waste the troubadour trapeze
of imagining what isn’t.
While I chase away all the women
I find magnetic on the street
as I sit on my stool
next to a chalkboard sign
that reads: POEMS MADE HERE
as I ask them each:
“Would you like me to write you a poem?”
I’ve been consistently astounded by the ease of my words
to amaze these strangers (most of them not possible dates)
once they’ve agreed to give me thirty minutes
to compose a poem on a subject of their choice—
When they return, I read it with as much vigor
as I can muster with many gazes in their eyes—
looking up from the handwritten page
as I shock them with the terrifying beauty of language.
I don’t believe they are just being polite
Their reactions are tethered to some essential loss
of the power of language—
that is the poet’s duty to restore,
safeguard, desire, and adore,
never letting it stay stagnant
relinquished to a dusty moratorium
of the university library:
word defeated by image.
These vast distances exist in the fernweh
of public: wanderlust in localities
existing between doubt
and happenstance—
how to reach the precipice
in such a way that it is clear
to the potential lovers whom desire
each other in the brevity of interaction
compelling occurrence—that petty customs
would not raise the barricades
cinch down the ballasts
and break away
from belonging:
its own destination
far of civics’
bitter divisions
and if we’re both desperate:
isolated in desolation—
for sex—
that limited connective tissue
of momentous momentum
and don’t believe there’s any intellect
to be exchanged
than let us make love
with no expectation—
we’re all too far
from each other regardless
But what hollow doings:
to clean your flute
fill your bowl
dispel forwards other fantasies
and the larger grandeur
Why doesn’t this grandeur exist
self-evident, easy to grasp—
at least when you feel it,
ah, but it slips away
as I misconstrue you—
and the steel we are born to
and must I heat my soul
towards more immanent fires
before strangers will visualize me,
molten, beyond mere image—
these tinsel disaffections
we are all beholden to
Hence why I’m a poet
set up on the street
as the tides of the city unknown spill
before me and I seize on the courage to engage—
at least one woman so far has called me bold
and it is this ribald boldness of atrium and word
that I wish to imbue
into this vast distance
between us all—
we are not mere insects
of fickle conditioning
hive-minded, but not telepathic
each stuck to our separate clock gear’s tooth
barely more than glancing
as we all grind pass
a few sparks falling
by the wayside,
the barest minimum
acknowledgement
of presence—
Sure we may attempt a “hi” once in awhile
if the neurotic stars align between our nervous systems,
the pavement, and social expectations—
and we can strike up a conversation
like a match, carefully about the weather
as it burns out, waiting at the bus stop
and certain people by pigheadedness or grace
or the combination of both forces
hasten us over—the precipice
stalling the drop for a few seconds—
as we gaze over the dark flowering abyss
slow to recognize the wildflower fields
of minutes’ prisms, hours’ hue,
hopefully days’ crescent rippling into months’ compass
venturesome spectrum years—
where we wouldn’t allow age
to slow our contingency:
In the event of disaster:
an absurd foot in the mouth
a rejection slip of the tongue
a balderdash gesture signaled
to someone we thought we knew
in some other aspect
they were denying
and buried in their face:
hence why we hide our feelings
in our gaze, and look away,
from the stranger approaching
inside all of us:
We who will shorten the vastness
with the scaffold of proximity—
—Proxima Centauri urges us so—
—as much as dream, the moon,
the sun, human measure—
For there is an entire audience
of strangers we’ve met
or are yet
to meet.
They multiply by the day
into distances that exist
by every direction, thus every distance
every presence—
Hello,
Would you like to hear a poem?
Ian Forsyth is a poet, novelist, film director, and community organizer out of Portland, Oregon. After working nonstop since Earth Day 2014 against the world’s largest chemical corporations for November’s election, he plans to drop out as a bohemian for eight months in Europe, gathering the necessary rest, relaxation, and inspiration for his fourth novel. .
–Art by Marta Bevacqua
–Art by Alphan Yýlmazmaden
–Art by Seamus Travers