or “The Email Question”
I recently had my main computer, a desktop, grind to a halt… or at least a yield. It’s not a tragedy and it’s not anyone’s fault (quality of the device or anything like that), it’s just what time does to things. I’m at peace with my condition. A bit adrift. Learning. Adapting. People left sitting in the inbox—nothing that is a matter of life and death. Feeling bad or guilty about it only delays the labors needed to get to the work itself. It doesn’t mean I don’t care for those folk, it’s that I’m focused on the here and now that is localized to my immediate senses. They’ll call on the telephone if they really need something. Tarry on, sally forth. Olive juice.
Though I know that the machine is salvageable and usable, it is not yet immediately accessible due to the archaeology of things that have accumulated on the device. In that regards it’s very much my fault that the machine has slowed down to a syrupy malaise of delay. I know the reboot cycle well. This is not my first rodeo, there have been other computers before and I’ve successfully preserved much data, almost certainly too much data, as I’ve upgraded to the next, promised shiny box. Obviously, there are better computer practices than the ones I maintained (as there are for all things), and young and clever folk will laugh at my ignorance of the best and easiest ways to catch the proverbial mouse. The system I created for the desktop in question worked admirably for years, but… bit rot is inevitable at this point. So, questions usually abound. What/When. Where. How. It is accepted that everyone has their own Why’s…
Quite an opportunity, really, if we sit down and think about it. After years of self-education invested into teaching myself to code, starting at 1 and/or 0, copying “<html></html>” out of a book, never wanting or intending to be the next great tech giant, more just someone who understands what’s under the hood, to see the electricity in my mind’s eye when I push a button… and, yes, I do feel a sense of mission accomplished. I’ve written code in ink, because I found it helps me to think about the act from within pure abstraction. Typing and enter keys are my modern day punch cards, and the computer checks my work and also generates the work’s manifest. Very neat.
Elegant, really. Coding is an amazing and delightful language. Marvelous in its execution. Blueprints extraordinaire. Valde mundus. Further admirable in that it facilitates my personal interest in Latin verse and declensions—I am currently listening to a news update read in Latin—come on now, that’s down right magical. A utility to capture a handful of the past and cast it forth into the future, to oscillate in balance between educational experiences, the ethereal and the actual working in concert—that’s where I am in the totality of our technology. Or in short, I’ve come to learn over the years how to truly play. Vere ludere.
When one is placed into digital crisis, where the wires and stations of your existing infrastructure no longer serve you as they once did, change is inevitable. Playing through that change is helpful–makes it less stressful. Those questions of utility rise up again (quantus / qua, quando, quare personalis, quamodo) and are handled as best they can with the available resources. We quickly come to find what those resources are, what was passive becomes kinetic (you grab things in your hands), and new habits are formed.
What I found this time round is what is possibly always occurring in and within transitions: That which maximizes the dual qualities of self-containment and exchange are the easiest to maintain throughout a switch-procedure. That can be more simply expressed by stating that open and closed systems are not mutually exclusive. One can have an environment that is independent unto itself, and yet, in that form, it effortlessly is able to share and be shared, both internally and externally, with itself and others. At its most basic composition, this is how knowledge is accumulated. Nonne? Is it not?
Let’s reframe that sentiment into something more readily accessible: a nice kitchen perhaps. A kitchen is a designated area to process food. I mean, we could store our honey in a sock drawer, it would keep, but it truly is a most unsatisfying combination of objects and sensorial implications to hold concurrently in one’s mind—my apologies, mea culpa. Likewise, I may keep a jar of olives in my quiver of arrows, but that might not make immediate sense to you, so, ultimately, it might be a better idea to have olives and honey centrally located so you too can draw nourishment from them when you come to visit. Perhaps we should designate it the official place for cooking, or coquīna (think “cuisine”).
Great, now we have a place that is our kitchen, an environment that is independent unto itself. That is a closed system. We cook and process food in the cooking and food processing place (we also can, together, take five—concors quinque). And because of that determination, we have an automatic understanding as people in kind about what to bring and take away from this location. If I want to find my baseball cards, I don’t head to the fridge. Probably, neither do you. There may be exceptions (if that’s you, then you sound pretty procul ex and a rather “hoopy frood”).
But things are not always so clear cut and towel dry in the computing world. We collect little bits of information, and the lines between folders and feeds (users and categories, kernels, inboxes and tags) become increasingly fragmented, crumbs falling into the cracks as we take on too big a byte.
Now, what is it that I’ve been trying to say? Why bother writing such a didactic series of words followed by such awful, awful puns? Why use a ten words when I can use four? Quare? “Loqui nobis.”
Because, I submit, that it’s important to demonstrate that there is method to madness. I could tell you something crazy in a short post entitled, “I may never check my email in a conventional manner ever again,” and it would be easily dismissed without some proper heft behind it. On it’s own, it’s a very unlikable sentence and sentiment. I could site some books and ride the coattails of other writers and thinkers [COUGH!] who have undoubtedly communicated the same thought that this entreaty of e-mail elimination entails with entirely more eloquentia than this self-effacing servant of Epsilon can e-posit or e-pose. Hmm, and I’m sure I’ll want another crack at the sentence myself sometime down the road. I am a writer after all, the itch is always there; whether anyone else wants to read it is secondary. If I always worried about the audience and forgot about the reader, I’d never author a single syllable. “Quia fortasse melius.”
So what was that opportunity again? Call it, publication as a method of storage. (You translate that.) Here we have notions and expressions, some waiting in dormant, some arising as the moment comes. With servers and the proper receptacle, all activity of creation and organizational processing can be localized to a membrane of files, both stored securely [TUSSIS!] and arranged categorically to be ready for public consumption. And that might look like email if you squint your eyes hard enough, but it’s really not.
Email is a lawless terrain of social relations, a grazing field of garble. Is it a letter? Is it a chat? Is it receipts? Is it commercial circulars? Is it where I go to do deep writing? Seal contracts? Is it where I go to delete things? Can it or should it ever be used the same way by all users? Is it possibly the most brilliant application of freedom ever devised, egalitarian-mail, everything for everyone? Well, maybe, but for me, for now, email is simply the place I may never check in a conventional manner ever again. In the natural selection of technological innovations, I don’t see email growing opposable thumbs and coming down from the trees. It’s hit or miss like a CB radio call. 4-10? Anybody? … X-IV. That’s just me though, my thought, you may weave your own web with whatever e-string you spinneret.
So, this is what I’m looking to accomplish here and maybe it has applicability to your profession as well: Audientes Inserviatur. I want all the work I do to be organized in such a manner that it is as easily shared in actual material form as it is in the digital (in my case, that means printing on some type of paper). Iunctio pro audiendum. An IP address? A physical bookshelf? A little shop? Tabula electronica? In any form, the achievement of a healthy degree of copyright control (and girding against exutus laborem) so that my livelihood may be preserved is a must. I write, professionally, it’s what I do; therefore, that work that is done by me must exist in a connective system where those seeking the words have appropriate accessum.
Tell me that that sounds like the work of email to you. Hmm? No, email is in the airs and in the trees. Strange labors. Simia temporis. Monkey time. And I love monkeys, and I love monkey time, absolutely nothing against the simians, but I wouldn’t ask them to help me work on my car—I can barely ask myself to do that—much easier to call out on the CB radio. There are limits to what things and monkeys can do. Email has limits. I have limits. Habemus limites. It’s best that we acknowledge that.
I think that’s why I like the telephone so much—very clear limits. I write for work, not for everything—batteries must be recharged. I do not want to take the Internet to all places with me, always. Quality of life is an actual consideration. For starters, for my general life, I want to deep read with old, dusty books. I don’t want to be buzzed away from sleep or interrupted in my day dreams. I want to plunge my hands into mud and earth and have nobody know (but for the fresh scent of flowers that grow for the effort). I’ll hear a phone ring, and if I can’t pick it up right then, I’ll walk over as soon as I can, check the number, listen to messages, respond appropriately. 10-4, bonum amicus. Quick, easy, determined, done, moving on. Praegressus.
We have gone to great lengths as a society to have true emergency personnel on call, ubiquitously. I am not that person. Unless I take on one of those positions, assume the uniform, learn the script, imbibe the training and the duty, and become the embodiment of a solemn oath, I am not that person to call. We who do not engage the life-threatening need not exist within the state of emergency. That spaces exist for people to breathe easily is the raison d’etre (causa existendi) of first responder services in the first place. Ave heroes, nos vivencium te salutant.
I am a child and grandchild, and I assume the responsibilities therein. I am a sibling, a spouse, a cousin, and I prioritize my family in my time and attention. I am a friend, satis amicus. I am a service provider, seeking to promote as much verifiable autonomy, parity, and opportunity as is responsibly achievable. Apo vapor. I bind steam.
As a citizen, I am not an emergency call—I hold no position of authority, I would notate otherwise were it so. In business, I am not that person. I am a writer. Words worth weight take time and consideration to be felt, processed, and presented. Tela sono. If we are wondering where we are in the process… we have telephones, tools of sound, and they have served us well since 1876.
“Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!”
“Veni! Volo videre!” The first use of the phone was to communicate a need to congregate for clearest communication. Meetings, face to face, “tunc autem facie ad faciem” can not be replicated or replaced. Not for me, for I like tea too much.
Tea, Camellia sinensis, is good pretty much all the time (when made properly), and accommodates any manner of environments. It means something in a space and to a place that tea is made or available. What we had was a vacuum, a degree of nothingness, not absolute, but some pretty healthy nothing… and now we have a catalyst—something warm and delicious that is here before us—made in our kitchen.
And maybe I have that wrong, maybe your tea is tau and pi makes a puddle, becomes a pine tree in Catalonia, and that helps you think of peace and unity, like my olives and my arrows. It doesn’t matter what you like. You like it. Te delectat? Verum? Valde. That’s enough in all reasonable conditions. It harms no others. It makes your world warm and delicious. Sally forth while I tarry on and silently utter for olive juice.
Yes, it seems to take the whole world, totius mundi, from Chinese and Indian leaves to municipal utilities to having a reason to boil the water, to mouth the words. The simple things we like and share, the conditions that sustain and enliven us, are achieved through a massively complex array of defined borders and rigid accounting, systems open and closed. All that work and effort, across language barriers and regional variation, and the consequence is that I can have a nice cup of thea any time I want, provided I plan accordingly.
Have we reached yet the summary point, where the challenged computer, the email stream, lingua Latina, and cozy kitchens become a single revelation? When do those posed questions become relevant? How do we propose, friend, to understand this epistle with more profundity and deep thought? Et quare manere enim meum stultiloquium?
Those are sound questions, and I’d love to answer them someday. For now, the short answer is, I think, to share and enjoy. Ad participes et frui. Sharing requires a communal subject, and enjoyment is a personal experience. One’s Latin might indicate that the idea is to participate as a means towards achieving fruition.
So there, maybe email isn’t the answer—not enough commonality, too chaotic, very limited specificity and an array too free to ever fully buy-in. There too, maybe computers with big, woody, pulpy, rotty hard drives isn’t the most salient of purchases for the average citizen—not enough reasonable need? Have we gone too far?
Erit prosimus explorare aliis optionum? Maybe we should set up some sort of designated locale to swap and store our thoughts? Optime! Prosit with some tea? Qua? Quamodo? Maybe something like this WordPress site would suit our needs nicely. Hmm. Iustum. Just so.
If these waxed and waning words have entertained and informed, that is more than I could have asked. Perhaps you would like to share and enjoy them again with some other reader and start your own conversation therein? Vel tremulo non. In the other case, forgive my silly sins and search again a quirky quote to engage a writer more worthy of note, to this I take no offense:
“Share and enjoy.”
Share and enJoyce.
