I've recently been
wondering where I'm going. Most people probably do at times. I love computers, as toys and as tools, but the fact is that I'm now studying
compsci because its entrance exams had no books and I've speculated a
soulless cube job once I somehow graduate.
My other passion, philosophy, could never support me outside a teaching job - which I haven't the slightest interest in - and on the university level has seemed less concerned with what's right, how we should live and how to contribute our knowledge to society than
semantics in their purest form. Downright pathological
procrastination, while not on paraclete's level of trouble, is a daily
chainsaw to the kneecaps with
everything I want to do.
Today I dragged myself to an evening lecture of the course
Information Technology And Society, deplored by many of my colleagues as "humanist crap." What I found there was an introduction to the field of
information ethics. The
digital divide. Robotics in manufacturing. Robotics in combat, the distancing of the soldier from his victims.
Technology and the erosion of privacy. The opportunities and moral demands of modern surveillance capabilities. Technological development's effects on society's. The lecturer was nothing but glad to provide links, names of experts, names of journals, titles of books in the library and titles of books he stands to borrow. When he mentioned his upcoming
dissertation I agreed to read it before realizing what I was saying.
Elation spilled as I cycled back to home base between the snowbanks. I wondered how the desolate
leaf trees would look if I was a child or a biologist. If I knew how to grow them, what would I think of these? How did they grow in the summer? Jolted out of my usual grind I looked at knotholes and snowdrifts and all the little wonders that we don't see because they're there every day. When I got away from tall buildings to a long, open stretch, I stopped to look at the sky.
It was that moment after sundown when it's just light enough to see properly. The sky was clear and blue, in the sense that the sea is wet. Shade after shade, a
palette entirely of blues,
azure and
cerulean by the glow on the western horizon changed into the deeper shades as they rose up, then became almost black in the east with the dark blue of the deep sea in the north and south. This was not a backdrop to clouds and planes. It had substance. It was the sky-dome hanging over us. It was the cosmic egg of
Kalevala that birthed the world. The moon hung as a sharp sickle, so that it was
just possible to make out the dark part of its sphere. It didn't look like small white blob that I've seen every night I've been outside. It looked like another world. A single star was shining, unless it was a
satellite. The
zenith was turning black, the others would be bright tonight.
A few passers-by looked only ahead of themselves, and when I asked them to look at the sky
they just looked at me. I probably didn't laugh at them, though I did feel like it. Instead I called a friend. We don't talk much, neither of us is good at it. Back in High School, when she was lost and afraid, we used to at great length. Now she's stronger, she's found someone and he's found her, so I'm
glad. But she's called me to say that the
Northern Lights are out or even that there's a great rainbow,
so I said:
Hi, I just wanted to tell you how beautiful the sky is right now.
She looked. We chatted briefly, until my ungloved phone hand started screaming at -17 C, then I went inside and thought about just how lucky anyone is to have someone to tell that to.
It took me two weeks to force
Middle-Earth for moviegoers out, fighting with myself for every word of a relatively simple non-fiction node, but now I'm simply sitting here and typing, getting the log done in paltry hours. I'm without my wariness and my usual coating of self-cynicism, and I don't CARE.
I think things are looking up.