This is why ‘the Machine’ concerns me

“Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops - but not on our lies. The Machine proceeds - but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.” (E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops, 1909)

“Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometres an hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was hungry and to sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock. He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world.” (Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1954)

“Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass.” (Confucius)

“Sorry, a machine can’t forgive your mistakes.” (Anon.)

“Books don’t need batteries.” (Nadine Gordimer)

"Now, a machine however subtle does not feel love, does not pray, does not have a sense of the sacred, a sense of awe and wonder. To me these are human qualities that no machine, however elaborate, would be able to reproduce. You may love your computer but your computer does not love you." (Kallistos Ware)

Source: https://twitter.com/nasahistory/status/951861340557234177

This is why ‘the Machine’ concerns me. Not that it might one day determine what I might eat or drink, or whether I can drink or eat at all, but that it will not hear my cries. That it will know nothing of physical thirst or of gut-wrenching despair. How can ‘they’ not understand this? It will have no comprehension of forgiveness. It will never wipe the slate clean. There is no delete. No such thing as absolution. It will deny to give me a fresh start [another more terrible dimension to DoS attack]. Mercy does not run through its microcircuitry. Don’t rush to embrace it too soon, this Trojan Horse which comes as a peace offering to the gods. The Creator has mercy for us, “[t]hough your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Is. 1:18). The ‘Machine’ which is ‘spirited’ by power to apply force and control, is unmoved to our petitions, “Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye” (2001: A Space Odyssey). This is the elephant in the living room. Something holds us back, a foreboding, a premonition perhaps, that keeps us from directly addressing this subject.

It really is difficult to see people broken, humiliated, and in some instances to have their lives taken away from them because of something they might have said five, ten, twenty or more years previously. For someone, for whatever reason, to dredge up ‘sins’ of the past in order to hurt, or more concisely, to cause irreparable damage to the other. Who among us hasn’t said something which they haven’t later regretted, or where our words and sentiments can be elicited to carry a meaning or an attitude not originally intended? These can be errors of speech, peer group pressure, or the result of youth and immaturity. Yet it is there, it has been recorded. It is ‘played back’ oblivious to the context. Context is that which “throws light on meaning”.[1] We all make stupid mistakes. It takes time for wisdom and life experience to meld. And in other instances we get to a certain age and become anachronistic dinosaurs. The ‘Machine’ [input-process-output] is calculating and efficient. To ‘terminate’ these people is to simultaneously terminate ourselves. It is to do to another, that which can be done back to us. The ‘Machine’ defines us by our mistakes. It groups us in categories and dumps us in information silos. Is this the fate of the human spirit, to be “born into this?”[2] Imprisoned inside the “big iron” mainframes… like Ted Hughes’ proud Jaguar in “prison darkness” in its cage?

To forgive is an expression of one of our highest elevations as human beings. It is nobler than our finest literature, our greatest art, our most beautiful music. It is greater than all these when practised with a true heart for it takes us into the realms of the deepest mysteries of our combined representations of the Divine. In our religious experience we do not awe at the Creator’s ability with the harp or the writing of celestial sonnets, but rather we are amazed at the expression of God’s mercy and forgiveness. To the extent that we ourselves do the same with our fellow human, that is, to extend our grace towards those who we perceive to have wronged us, we are in the “image and likeness” of the Creator (Gen. 1:26).  We forgive that we could enter more genuinely into the space of compassion, that we might go on loving. The root of “forgive” is the Latin word “perdonare,” meaning “to give completely, without “reservation.” (“perdonare” is also the source of our English “pardon”).  We give up the desire or the power to punish.[3] The ‘Machine’ knows nothing of compassion. It will not forgive because it cannot love. Algorithms don’t have soul; they are devoid of incorporeal essence:

“You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush.” (Maya Angelou)

In life not all acts of fellowship are received well or reciprocated. When the grace we give is not accepted and is returned it can be brutal. It is a place of heavy tears. We are living increasingly in a world which keeps us isolated one from the other, and where we might be called-out or cancelled as swiftly as the swatting of an irritating fly. This is not because people are wicked, on the contrary, most people are generous and kind-hearted. We are all fragile vessels on an oftentimes bumpy journey. We can crack. And this is the tragedy, the irony, that this very fragility draws us into systems and networks and ‘mobs’ where we do things so that we, ourselves, might not be hurt. It is increasingly becoming a survival technique. The online world especially has hurt and devastated people by its millions, either by their own hand [addictive behaviours] or cyber-attacks [bullying, misinformation]. “As rapidly as technology advanced,” writes Joseph Carvalko in his prescient novel Death by Internet, “goodness declined…”. Communication technologies are not exempt. They are the voice of ‘the Machine’. The apparatus has no spiritual knowledge of humility and so it cannot practise repentance. Computational empathy or affective computing, is mimicry at worst, and simulation at best. The ‘Machine’ possesses no natural ontology, knowledge representation and reasoning, does not automatically equate to higher consciousness. It cannot possess “human memory”. And therefore it does not know what it is like to be human. I dread to think, if the present-day capabilities of our 21st century technology were available to past totalitarian regimes [especially Advanced LBS and monitoring systems], how enormously more multiplied and innovative their crimes would have been.[4]

To meet likeminded spirits along the way means so very much. It could make all the difference in the world, to have the strength, to hold onto the courage, to keep pushing apart that impalpable space between the light and the darkness. How good to have a friend who is real and co-substantial. To receive an encouraging message to remind you of your humanity, to have sympathy for you precisely because of your flesh and blood. To be accepted for all your faults and list of misdemeanours. And if need be, as it sometimes will be, for one or the other to say “I am sorry”, and to hear those marvellous words in reply, “All is good, I understand.” Not just a graphical control element, or a voice on the other side of an interface, or a recorded message with push button instructions. A machine could be programmed to ‘speak’ all the good things in the realm of metaphysics, but we will always have the perspicacity, that penetrating discernment, that it is artificial, and synthetic. Those words, the programming languages [even if they should ever become distinctly compositional], will never, cannot ever come from the heart [“the blood-beat” of the poets], the place of will and intention. Technology, of course, in and of itself, is not the problem, but our connection to it needs to be kept under constant vigilance, that is, we must keep awake as to how it infiltrates and attempts to redefine our very existence as human beings. When we are in need of some light and succour all the artificial intelligence and interconnectivity in the world will mean nothing. It is like being trapped in a vault of bullion of an unlimited value with no means of escape or communication. What then the benefit of all that precious metal? What good if we are building towards this terrible prediction:

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” (George Orwell)

We give our technology compelling names and dress it up with the most dazzling colours and logos. Many of these technologies, ultimately the most potentially dangerous, we make anthropomorphic. We dress up for example, and give large adorable eyes to the robots. We make-believe that we are understood and can even be loved by ‘the Machine’, that its cold intelligence will keep us warm at night. ‘It’ will seek those divine attributes which we ordinarily attribute to Deity: omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnificence. But being created in the image and likeness of the creation itself it cannot by definition ever achieve them. And so it will incrementally grow to become commensurately desirous and aggressive. The monster built by Victor Frankenstein eventually turns on his creator in murderous rage for making him hideous and incapable of fulfilling its integrated dynamism [5] . The singularity will not breathe new life into us to make us immortal. It could one day make you the ‘undead’, but never immortal. We would do good, as well, to not quickly forget the lesson of the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9). Technology gone awry on account of the hubris of the builders and the resultant breakdown of communication.

We know ourselves better than those who might be wanting to hurt us and much better than ‘the Machine’ which wants to imprison us in its central repositories and data warehouses. Their efforts to cause us pain, to potentially bring us to some humiliation, pale in comparison to our own battles, the fight against our compulsions, and those myriad fetishes within. We know much better than our real-life adversaries and the ‘electronic eye’ of the darkness fighting, assailing our souls, as we try to limit its impact on our lives and on the lives of others. If only they [both the adversaries and the ‘comptrollers’] knew the whole truth, had some insight of the context, they would be ashamed and terrified at the same time. Big Brother and uberveillance as much they might try to get inside the head, to get to the “whole truth” with their own particular strains of watching techniques, can only endlessly fall short of the mark. Our life is a mystery infinitely inexhaustible. We are so much more, much more than our search history and CCTV captures. It is weight enough to grasp what those words below from Miłosz mean for each one of us, before even ‘the Machine’ goes after our self-discovery to take away that private space where away from prying eyes we do our living and our dying: 

“To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labour for one human life.” (Czesław Miłosz)

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/context

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQJengH58ow

[3] https://www.etymonline.com/word/forgive

[4] https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1716&context=infopapers

[5] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/frankenstein

Eric Arthur Blair aka 'George Orwell'

26th May, 2011 [date of the original draft]

Sydney, Kingsgrove

I have just finished reading a selection of George Orwell’s letters and was deeply moved by his acute anxiety to protect his adopted young son, Richard, from any potential infection of the tuberculosis which was killing the famous author and essayist.[1] Orwell’s love and concern for the boy was particularly evident and tender-hearted when he was lying on his death bed at UCH in London (University College Hospital) and painfully desperate to embrace the little boy but having to push him away. He was “absolutely devoted” to his son.[2] Writers, too, like all other artists, are more than the iconic works with which they are normally identified.

For most people George Orwell will forever be connected to those classic socio-political critiques of the ‘engineered’ trajectory towards ideological monoliths and totalitarianism, Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949).[3] This is unfortunate for a number of reasons. To begin with Orwell was a prolific writer and an amazingly generous correspondent, and this despite his persistent and ultimately fatal joust with TB at the age of forty-six (though given the viciousness of his disease he invariably appears much older in photographs). Towards the end of his life writing became an increasingly difficult task and the use of heavy and unreliable typewriters for a bed-ridden man made the task even more onerous. Both of the novels for which he is chiefly famous for were written towards the end of his life, 1984 was his last major literary undertaking.[4] There is then, and despite his early death, a voluminous amount of material which serves as a backdrop to these two books. To study these novels (given the special subject matter) outside Orwell’s political and social inheritance is to fall into the trap of caricaturing or misinterpreting his philosophical thought. This no less given the confusion of his position on socialism and communism and the evident distinctions he wants to make between the two, but then also with his interpretation of the unique brand of British socialism itself.[5] In the excellent introduction to his correspondence, Peter Davison pinpoints the reason why we find a none too small collection of inconsistencies to do with Orwell. Notwithstanding his own political ambivalences there are those who without reasonable knowledge of his life quote him in catchphrases which only adds to these ‘misinterpretations’:

“…many of those who refer to Orwell seem not to have read much more than Animal Farm and Nineteen-Eighty-Four, if those. The millions who have heard of Big Brother and Room 101 know nothing of their progenitor. Ignorance of Orwell is also to be found in academic circles…”[6]

This would account for some of the political contradictions and his ‘contrariness’ which Orwellian students will invariably point to.[7] It does play an important part of how we are to receive and understand these books together with the socio-political conditions, ideologies, laws and practises he wants to anatomize and to critique. It is tempting for some to put aside the actual life of the author, particularly given the cinematic translation of the works, and to miss the message altogether: that George Orwell’s stories have more to do with the ‘human condition’ as a universal experience over any political or geographical borders. And so, we can with confidence in our own times, consider how he would have ‘reviewed’ liberal democracies bent on panoptic surveillance and the resultant erosion of our private space. This is a vital point which also permits for the broader context of his work to remain both inventive and relevant as a diachronic critique as to how civil societies “form” and “change”. Particularly in the sphere of social theory, and especially with readings connected to conflict perspective. The same we could write for example of Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, and Margaret Atwood. Even the same let’s say for the religious ‘eschatologist’ Seraphim Rose. The famous story which underpins 1984 itself, is only ever incidental to the greater truths of what man [ideally] is rather than what man can [potentially] become, which Orwell subtly yet effectively communicates:

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” (1984)

“If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.” (1984)

There is also the graphic and unforgettable warning of what we are ‘politically’ capable of [in Aristotelian terms of “zoon politikon”] rather than a pure and simple critique of a prevailing ideology or the sinister shadow of the “political Leviathan” Big Brother.[8] There is a great deal of political philosophy to be found in these dystopian stories of a dis-functioning hierarchical social system primarily brought about not by ‘authority’, but ultimately by the consent of a vulnerable and crushed human spirit. Almost everywhere, Orwell is saying, it is unacceptable for the power elite, whatever name or label they might go under, to rule over and to tyrannize the vulnerable. ‘Hell’ begins at the point when we are no longer free and able to act as we would wish. Here is the fundamental place from where both “Big Brother” and “Uberveillance” emerge, to depth-charge into the other places of our social activity and everyday being. The irony is that nowadays we are becoming much more than just willing participants in this mushrooming surveillance ecosystem, but are in fact inviting “Room 101” and our very jailers, not only into our homes, BUT into our blood streams.[9]

[1] Orwell, A Life in Letters, Peter Davison, (Harvill, Secker: London, 1998).

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jdftY4j-Nc

[3] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/biography/

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/10/1984-george-orwell

[5] https://www.biographyonline.net/socialism-george-orwell/

[6] Orwell, op. cit., p. ix

[7] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/01/27/honest-decent-wrong

[8] https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780203941638/chapters/10.4324/9780203941638-7

[9] Uberveillance and the Social Implications of Microchip Implants, M. G. Michael and Katina Michael (eds), (IGI Global: PA, 2014).

On Why Some Measure of Privacy is Still Salvageable

I received a huge surprise some months ago when I was invited to represent the IEEE Society on the Social Implications of Technology (IEEE SSIT) in Geneva at WSIS 2016.[1] This addendum is not a review of the panel session or of my general impressions of the overall meeting both of which were excellent.[2] I only wish to elaborate on two points which I had left unfinished given the time restrictions to do with our brief individual presentations. Afterwards in a more intimate gathering it was good to tease out some of the narrower implications of my summary during the course of that brisk afternoon.

I suggested privacy is not altogether dead, and some measure of it is still salvageable.[3] That we are for the greater part already known and quantified should be taken for granted, especially as regards to informational privacy.[4] That much is absolutely true. However, to completely surrender the privacy borders which are still in place is to give in to ‘Big Brother’ unconditionally and allow for depth-charged uberveillance to be introduced into our flesh for the purposes of constant monitoring, locating, and tracking.[5] Resistance is not futile when it comes to protecting whatever little of the privacy borders remain.[6] But even in the present environment we can still limit and protect our internet data flow. We can limit our use of social media, limit our use of mobile telephony, and make concerted efforts to protect our privacy by not giving in to pressures to release sensitive data or information of ourselves for the sake of rewards or convenience. Crucially, too, software design initiatives such as Privacy by Design (PbD), building privacy into the design specifications and architecture of systems and processes, should be strongly encouraged if not altogether mandated.[7]

WikiLeaks et al. and Snowden (XKS, PRISM) notwithstanding what is still left to fight for is the sacredness and inviolability of our inner space.[8] It is to stop any outside entity from introducing surveillance laboratories on the inside of our bodies.[9] Any unnecessary or unwarranted surveillance -“above and beyond”- will quickly erode human dignity, diminish our freedom, and curtail spontaneity which is the underlying force of imagination. My greatest fear is the universal numbering of human beings via implantables from cradle-to-grave and the use of such automated identification data warehouses in company-centric deposits and more so by totalitarian- and ostensibly democratic- regimes.[10]

During question time I was asked by a remote participant whether I believed uberveillance will happen, and what could we do to stop it.[11] To begin with RFID implants are not new, they are decades old. We have been implanting cats and dogs and cattle for years. In recent years it has become commonplace to find ICT devices in people for a variety of applications.[12] The discernible trajectory being the widespread adoption of embedded surveillance for value added services and [‘perceived’] total transparency. Small doubt uberveillance in one form or another will be realized. Whether this be initially on an opt-in basis and then ultimately so enmeshed in our day-to-day lives to become compulsory by necessity or enforced by political systems. When will it happen or how? I cannot give you the answer. I am not the prophet here. Others might well want to wonder with timelines and introduce apocalyptic rhetoric into the discussion. It is not necessary for the tell-tale narrative increasingly speaks for itself. Can we stop it? I do not know.[13] But what we can and must do, is to form cross national alliances at every level of our civic lives to make it as difficult as possible for governments or corporate conglomerates to force us (or to make us feel it necessary) to go down this shadowy path. It is for example a major obstacle when the UN and the EU have different comprehensions and policies on the protection and rights of privacy. Even individual states within sovereign nations have different privacy principles. We need a universal code of adhered ICT ethics. That is, accepted standards which will help determine our judgements when it comes to implantables along the lines of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.[14] I add here, as I stressed in Geneva, I believe in people power and have only little faith in institutions. Committed individuals can make a difference. Grassroots activism and protest are proven big game changers.

Implantables, of course in themselves are not the problem here, their beneficial use in medical science has been well documented. The problem rests with their blanket and undiscerning use in surveillance. We all need to be aware of function creep and to identify the wrongful uses and abuses of the various veillances in our daily lives. For instance, few would argue that such innovations as BrainGate [15] should be halted, but for the greater part we should ponder a world where such neural interface technologies are repurposed outside the application of the disabled toward every day human augmentation. This is indeed to trespass the last bastion of privacy, our deepest of thoughts, and that which means we remain free. For now we can and must safeguard what some scholars are referring to, and quite realistically too, as “meaningful privacy”.[16] If we should ever totally lose our privacy on which our rights and identity are so vitally dependent upon from top to bottom, it would be a singular catastrophe. Given such a scenario, there would be no comeback and no hope of a re-build even as there is after war.

I also spoke of these “exciting” times in which we live. My audience would have certainly had knowledge of the nuances and synonyms.

[1] http://internetinitiative.ieee.org/newsroom/ieee-to-join-stakeholders-at-the-world-summit-on-information-society-wsis-forum-2016-in-geneva-switzerland

[2] http://www.iloveengineering.org/latest/a1cae09f-68ce-4ca3-b552-6767dd78b146

[3] https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/forum/2016/Agenda/Session/150

[4] See Roger Clarke, 1999, Introduction to Dataveillance and Information Privacy, and Definitions of Terms, http://www.rogerclarke.com/DV/Intro.html

[5] http://www.igi-global.com/book/uberveillance-social-implications-microchip-implants/76728 See also, Christine Perakslis et al., “Evaluating border crossings in an interconnected world” IEEE Potentials, September/October, 2016, in press.

[6] http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7270446

[7] Privacy by Design: https://www.ipc.on.ca/english/privacy/introduction-to-pbd/

[8] Katina Michael and MG Michael, 2013, "No Limits to Watching?" Communications of the ACM, Vol. 56, Iss. 11, pp. 26-28. 

[9] http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1716&context=infopapers

[10] http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1594&context=infopapers

[11] https://www.amazon.com/Innovative-Automatic-Identification-Location-Based-Services/dp/1599047950

[12] Katina Michael and MG Michael, 2012, “Implementing Namebars Using Microchip Implants: The Blackbox Beneath the Skin”, Jeremy Pitt (Ed). This Pervasive Day: The Potential and Perils of Pervasive Computing, Imperial College Press, pp. 163-206: http://www.slideshare.net/focas-project/implementing-namebers-using-microchip-implants-the-black-box-beneath-the-skin

[13] See Roger Clarke’s Keynote 2nd RNSA Workshop, What 'Überveillance' Is, and What To Do About It': http://www.rogerclarke.com/DV/RNSA07.html

[14]  See Stefano Rodota and Rafael Capurro’s,  Ethical Aspects of ICT Implants in the Human Body (Opinion 20), 2005: http://bookshop.europa.eu/pl/opinion-on-the-ethical-aspects-of-ict-implants-in-the-human-body-pbKAAJ05020/downloads/KA-AJ-05-020-3A-C/KAAJ050203AC_002.pdf;pgid=y8dIS7GUWMdSR0EAlMEUUsWb0000bHgL75Og;sid=fOh6iXL9ReR6niGOclfkLhDYezt8WtA-ALg=?FileName=KAAJ050203AC_002.pdf&SKU=KAAJ050203AC_PDF&CatalogueNumber=KA-AJ-05-020-3A-C

[15] BrainGate: Wired for Thought: http://www.braingate.com/

[16] See Christine Runnegar’s presentation: https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/forum/2016/Agenda/Session/150

Walkabout in Geneva

Geneva, Switzerland

Café de Paris; Hotel Cristal; Genѐve-Cornavin Railway Station; a little girl on crutches chasing after the chocolate wrapper; a man with a huge bag carrying the stories from the night before; a woman smiling into her mobile twirling her black hair; the Holy Mother sculpted from granite is interceding for me; her Only-Begotten carved from fine wood afloat in mid-air; a homeless angel with a yellow scarf sleeping beneath the pew; not long from now one of us will be dead; I was here three decades ago when I would consume Him; let go, Michael, let go; you hear me, let go, Jeremiah, let go; who is eating the flowers; Edelweiss; leaflets in the shape of stars; beware of the pickpockets; lost and found; an angel searching for his wings; an old woman ferrying a broken pram with a blue wedding dress; please, I am still waiting; Pauline always replies even as she orbits the earth; Tchaikovsky’s letters from fevered rooms and anticipating cities; “Once I was seven years old” (Lukas Graham); happy birthday dear Father beneath the earth; Fauré’s Requiem in D minor; a man with an umbrella hanging from his back is riding a scooter; a young man with big eyes is arguing with the mischievous Cupid; Lac Léman is undulating like Rilke beneath the surface of things; will they be interested in what I have to say; they will not stop that which is soon to come; the second death as unexpected as a spider’s web around your left ear; it is getting dark and pieces of water are starting to break; two silver bicycles tied to a light post; “Bicycle Thieves” (Vittorio De Sica); “Seven Samurai” (Akira Kurosawa); “A movie as rich as a buttered steak topped with grilled eel” (a discerning critic); a man and a woman outside are exchanging photos which will prove them wrong in the morning; Harry Chapin and Bob Dylan; story tellers and word painters; a little bird nested on my laptop; Icarus flew too close to the truth; the flying trapeze tricks and catches; 1234, 12, 1234, 12…; OCD the disease of the prophets reminding us of the return; Arrivée; Départ; Place de Cornavin; Rue des Alpes; a bald Chinaman; a blackbird resting on the balcony; a bouncy girl with bumped up ponytails is on the look-out for the old woman with the pram; Thomas Aquinas the simplicity of God; Beethoven loved poets; Irina Ratushinskaya’s old parrot wanted “to swear in every language known to man”; TinTin was here; more homeless angels with baseball caps; “Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom” (Siddhartha, H.H.); John Calvin; Karl Barth; Hans Küng; the sounds of a didjeridu; music will remain free but there will be a cost to water; seventy-three of the Psalms are attributed to King David; equality and upward mobility the great paradox; save the middle-class; it is very cold and the nose is running; stories written on shivering skins; I should buy a scarf this morning; the great trees of Notre Dame; Hermann Hesse and Patrick White venerated trees; “Giant Trees of Switzerland” (Michel Brunner); every day twenty two thousand children day from preventable pathologies; quantum mechanics and the smallest unit of time; the age of irreversible innovation; Famous Fresh Baguettes; EdelWeiss Shop; Swiss Watches; booming sales of advertising; Facebook profits surge; Google air balloon Wi-Fi hot spots over parched land; A Father walking with his Son who has a bent back; Jean Dubuffet Métamorphoses du paysage; a woman on the corner waiting for a book; I saw you many years ago in Zermatt outside the bakery; a little boy with winter gloves drinking hot chocolate; “Old man look at me now I’m a lot like you were” (Neil Young); did anyone enjoy the Joe Cocker post; the prophetic insights of Pink Floyd; Sachin Tendulkar does not like Greg Chappell; the umpire’s finger will eventually go up; howzattt; your love dripping down my right shoulder like scalding water; yes, Katina, tear open the envelope; it probably has to do with the little stories from Saigon; Jorge Luis Borges is waiting; tronc pour les fleurs; Ave Maria; La basilique Notre-Dame; I have to go to the post office; Rue du Mont-Blanc; Victorinox is everywhere; I wish I didn’t have to do this; I can’t speak without notes anymore; I only want to collect words and images; “We drilled with wooden rifles” (W.H. Auden); the Venus of Brassempouy; on the tusks of elephants an infallible biography; demand for ivory for piano keys; sucre.cannelle; nutella.banane; Grand Marnier; an angel with long hair and a leather jacket recognizes me and points to the post office; he gives me my ticket; I am writing postcards; keep walking else you will get lost; next to me two friends sharing a joke; a man with a groomed moustache enjoying a beer; a teenage runaway missing two fingers is filling his pockets with milk and sugar; rises in quarterly revenue people dying of hunger; slavery on the rise in the supply chain; human rights versus computer rights; 1234 12 1234 12…; nose bleed last night; dear Jesus how did I get here; the Panopticon; George Orwell; Uberveillance; a man far away from home is playing the harp; a woman lost on the streets nearby is brushing her hair and screaming; a blind man stops to listen; Agnus Dei choral music; help us all dear God; convection another name for thunder storms; Läderdach chocolates; I skipped breakfast this morning; the food industry; “Death in Venice” (Thomas Mann); “Death by Internet” (Joe Cavalko); death by degrees; Michael Eldred introducing Plato to the Blues; B.B. King buried with Lucille; Ray Charles swinging the ivory like on a trapeze; Billy Holliday Ripe Fruit; Consuelo Velasquez Bésame Mucho; Dalida Je suis malade; a man speaking with his mouth agape; an old man with a white ponytail and beard pointing to his walking stick; a couple with their little daughter in the shopping trolley next to the detergents; two women carrying shopping bags see me transcribing them into history; nothing is insignificant all acts touch upon the eternal; “Sonata Mulattica: A Life in Five Movements and a Short Play” (Rita Frances Dove); tomorrow I leave for the Inter Continental; conferences will not change the world; love and destruction change the world; the Apocalypse of John; thanks for the adaptor Charlie; the remote control never works the first time; the body sinks into the bath where for a minute it must drown; “Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky...” (Prufrock, T.S. Eliot); a tall man with an ill-fitting suit smiles at me; I catch a glimpse of myself on the glass where the colourful balls are; where have I been all these years; like the “five star” squatters in Mozambique; the four men next to me discussing the ‘miracle’ of Leicester have left; the tall man with ill-fitting suit has returned with a young child to buy a red and blue ball; a woman opposite me has fitted her star-studded sunglasses into her hair; a quarter of a century ago she would have cast a furtive glance my way; “I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty” (Pablo Neruda); I will never get this talk down to three minutes; but I can get it down to three words; surveillance kills context; I miss you Father; old men are as prone to clichés as the hair growing out of their ears; “When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire…” (When You are Old, W.B. Yeats); the tooth hurts poison seeping into the jaw; another nose bleed; all pain is childbirth; a young woman carrying flowers and apples; Saint Catherine of Siena Giovanni Battista Tiepolo; hullo Katherine Albrecht all will be well; Palais des Nations; the Broken Chair; Cathédrale Saint-Pierre; Jardin Anglais; Avenue Giuseppe Motta; Rue du Rhone; Quai Wilson; Bongo Joe Records; Bon Génie; ICT Discovery; The Art and History Museum; 1234 12 1234 12…; Aleppo cries tonight; baby girl rescued in Kenya from beneath the rubble; authoritarian populism on the rise in America; Pindar already speaks of animated figures; “they appear to breathe in stone” and “move their marble feet”; see Michael Crichton’s Westworld “where nothing possibly can go wrong”; “Car 54, Where Are You”; the great late Fred Gwynne; The Munsters; Bus No. 5; where did the hours ago; packing almost done; airports; cemeteries; the late evening resurrection; Flight EK 414L; Seat 61D; home sweet home.