{"id":6481,"date":"2017-07-04T09:37:40","date_gmt":"2017-07-04T09:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/?p=6481"},"modified":"2023-06-27T11:58:37","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T11:58:37","slug":"decompression-by-william-stephenson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/2017\/07\/04\/decompression-by-william-stephenson\/","title":{"rendered":"Decompression by William Stephenson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Decompression<\/strong><\/p>\n

The induction program\u2019s willow pattern eyes
\nand terracotta lips matched those of the woman
\nI married in my first incarnation. She whispered,
\nJust you and me darling me darling<\/em> \u2013 a glitch, surely,
\nA stutter in the software \u2013 so make yourself yourself<\/em>.<\/p>\n

She projected the cooker and hob of our kitchen
\nonto the walls of my cell. Our clock, stopped at nine.
\nThe red LED of the warming oven. How fitting
\nthat a chain of zeroes and ones coded in California
\nshould inherit my wife\u2019s paper skin and ink-black hair,
\nour dreams of our teenage sons, both now uploaded.<\/p>\n

The table was crowded with algorithms whose integers
\nresolved into cups, bowls and spoons. We drank a soup
\nshe\u2019d blended from boiled square roots. Are you sure this
\nreally all happened this?<\/em> she asked. I mean been you\u2019ve been
\nunder lately stress lately. Adrenaline, perceptual distortion.<\/em>
\nMy darling my it\u2019s my darling okay.<\/em> Her endearments
\nLooped and scattered like pixels in a buffering film.<\/p>\n

We stepped through our front door into a canyon
\nof brick and stone. Beings with brushed tendrils
\njostled past us, lenses wrapping their eyes. Icons
\non screens glided like ice-pucks under their fingers.
\nSteel cages growled and screamed. Suspended suns
\ngilded the program\u2019s skin. This is dear this dear home.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

William Stephenson<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No doubt you have better nuggets of conversational wisdom to dispense over a meal, but somehow I found myself over lunch a few weeks ago trying to explain the \u2018internet of things\u2019 to my very patient companion. Not very well, obviously, as I picked up knife and fork and suggested that, in the near future, they would via the internet be able to \u2018talk\u2019 to each other, should they wish; of course, I had no idea what they might want to talk about if they ever did start communicating, and then I think I mentioned the \u2018connected fridge\u2019 and my companion ordered another round of Aperol Spritzes.<\/p>\n

I say all this because when I got back from lunch, I re-read this poem and was struck by the notion that, when it comes to technology, the urge to explain it in terms of, or at least placing in the context of, the kitchen seems to be, if not universal, pretty damn close to it. We won\u2019t trust the latest thing, the poem seems to say, unless it can be seen to make sense of the very practical and down to earth technology we use every day to keep us fuelled, sated.<\/p>\n

I should at this point say that I am taking the technology that is the \u2018induction program\u2019 to be some sort of Virtual Reality (VR) software, something which is allowing the narrator to summon up \u2013 perhaps summon back from the dead \u2013 his first wife, and some elements of the life they shared.<\/p>\n

What the poem does very well is convey the time lag, the stutter that any technology has (especially in its less mature phase) in trying to render reality, which is where VR is right now. The buffering pixels, the table crowded with integers \u2013 technology is never as smooth or as complete as it promises to be.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something else going on here too \u2013 a challenge, perhaps, to games like The Sims<\/em> or Minecraft<\/em>: however immersive those worlds might be, they can never truly provide the completeness of a \u2018real\u2019 home. But who knows what \u2018real\u2019 might become? Give it a few years, and we might be reading The Rialto<\/em> through a VR headset, while eating boiled square root soup.<\/p>\n

And for those of you who really want to know, Wikipedia defines the internet of things as: \u201cthe inter-networking<\/a> of physical devices, vehicles (also referred to as “connected devices” and “smart devices<\/a>“), buildings, and other items embedded<\/a> with electronics<\/a>, software<\/a>, sensors<\/a>, actuators<\/a>, and network connectivity<\/a> which enable these objects to collect and exchange data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pass me another Aperol Spritz.<\/p>\n

Rishi Dastidar<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Image: Yatheesh Gowda\/CC0 Public Domain with thanks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Decompression The induction program\u2019s willow pattern eyes and terracotta lips matched those of the woman I married in my first incarnation. She whispered, Just you and me darling me darling \u2013 a glitch, surely, A stutter in the software \u2013 so make yourself yourself. She projected the cooker and hob of our kitchen onto the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":722,"featured_media":6483,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/722"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6481"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6484,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6481\/revisions\/6484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}