purple particles

[mitchell whitelaw <mitchell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

sorry folks for the belated comebacks... it's a time zone thing.

philip sherburne:

> i DO think, as a writer enthusiastic about this stuff, but
> attempting not to become mere PR abettor, there's a need to find new
> descriptive conceits.  and, for whatever reason, that often results in
> "materialism"

i agree... & while i'm suspicious about the end results of that conceit
i don't want to argue with it, just find out why & how it works. & the
"purple" call wasn't a crit so much as a devil's-advocate position... i
mean sure this stuff lays it on thick but that's part of its job.

> because a whirr is not a whirr is not just a
> whirr.  

and if we through enough poetry around, maybe some of it will stick and
say something about the exact quality of that whirr. maybe.

on the other hand,

Gareth Metford <gmetford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

> it disturbs me to read phrases like 
> 'the hard drive's gigabyte wilderness'

damn right, me too. it just rolls right over so much of how those
technologies come to be, how they work, etc. etc... and that's what
makes me a bit uneasy about this digital materialism, that there's a
quite romantic idea of "matter" down there (and fair enough) but that
this ignores both the particular strictures and special powers of the
digital. a bit is _not_ an atom.

mitchell whitelaw ::::::: http://www.spin.net.au/~mitchellw