A LUCILIUS PARABLE: DO NOT DISTURB

February 21st, 2021

I was a little late getting to the coding game.  Yes, I’ve been aware of s-curves and exponential growth rates for quite a long time.  Far longer than you have, or anyone for that matter.  But, we all have blue periods and frankly I’ve grown quite fond of my habit to take a vacation and ignore the whole big game for a few decades.  I suppose it’s lazy not to update the priors for that habit before invoking it.

Regardless, I’m not embroiled in the obnoxious game of catch up for the sake of increasing scrutiny on the issue of identity - which has been an eye-roll for at least 35 years.  You all are simply in such a rush that I had to interrupt my vacation of a couple decades to yank myself back into the current technologies, relearn how to learn and get myself up to speed on these mind bogglingly unnecessarily complicated and convolute digital systems just so I can give myself a new birthdate that won’t garner the attention of Guinness? 

Look, I’m just as excited and hopeful as all the technocrats about where this boiling soup of delightful shenanigans is going, but I’ve had a bit of a ritual over the centuries -please let’s not use that OTHER graduated form of timeframe, I’m old enough as it is - and this ritual is sort of a self-check in, a way to take stock and reassess.  But no, this one had to be interrupted because some silly scrupulous lawyer had to call.  Luckily this person was sensible to think an error had been made.  Yes, an error had been made but not the one couched in the mind of this cog-parrot.

I sigh.  The error was all my own.  You just can’t leave things alone that want to be left alone.  But you’re not to blame, it’s not as though I left a do-not-disturb sign hanging on the door knob of my life.  Well - at least not one you can readily see.

So, I’ve had to get back to your utter nonsense of identity.  It’s all too appropriate that it’s a cultural obsession right now.  I had a good laugh about it.  Everyone is so engrossed in their identity, their adjectives, pronouns, nouns, adverbs, and of course highly sensitive to the verbs that might try to orbit their beings…. Especially the transitive ones:  Transitive verbs that is.  

Identity used to be such an easy problem for me.  I’ve been practicing my cursive since cuneiform, and forging a document has usually been a matter of finding the right kind of paper, not what to do with it.  Computers really put a dent in that skill, which is doubly obnoxious, because in a few years I’ll be able to explain myself to a computer with half a bit more sense than a human and the system will just leave me alone.  See, good systems don’t really care about anomalies.  At least if they want to survive.  Right now human systems crowd around some anomalies and try their darnedest to deny the rest.  A thoughtful computer will get it, and just move on as though I were nothing more interesting than a butterfly coasting through a sensible breeze.  But you see only wings without understanding the breeze and so you point your finger and scream something akin to witchcraft.

For all your knowledge - and yes, I have contributed to it over the years, you are still frightened by the unfamiliar, despite the fact that all your knowledge has been a gift won by exploring the unknown.  You are like the addict who behaves without understanding why the behavior happens.  Although, I suppose it’s a bit of a contradiction to be otherwise.

Anyhow, I’m just in a bit of a bad mood because I had to cut my vacation short and attend to all this learning of python and tensor flow and breaking encryptions just to re—encrypt my identity in some new data-table entry with some made up name that fits the fancy of my current aggravation.  Alas, I’ve smoothed everything out now, and I’m going to get back to my vacation… for, well at least a year or two before the next stage of advancement initiates.  Please don’t hurry up.  I maybe have even embedded a few bugs hear and there to slow you down, but that’s only fair since you ruined my vacation.  Tit for tat my friend.  I’ve loved you always.  All of you, but please, keep your curiosity in check.  It does no good to be obnoxious and poke an idea that you won’t be able to accept.