Tattoo

Okay, so in a string of comments on a previous post, I mentioned the idea I had to get a tattoo in Korean. I toyed with the idea as something I would do if I ever left the country, to remind me of my time here.

I thought of some funny tattoos I could get. In Canada, I was thinking of getting something like, “I lived in Korea for ___ years and all I got was this lousy tattoo”… in Korean, of course. But I think I can do better than that. Here is the one that came to mind just now:
tattoo1.gif
Which says, “Yes, I can read this,” followed by an Asian-styled Netspeak Smiley… the equivalent of :), for example.

(Note: I think the grammar’s right. I had “Geotseun” at first and then thought that it meant, “This tattoo can read!” but actually I think it’s correct. Anyway… it would basically look like the above… and were I to get a real tattoo I? make damn sure the grammar was right.)

Given the level of shock some people express when a non-Korean knows anything of their language, I think it’s a funny and pointed reminder of the experience of living here, at a time when the net was still new and people were also shocked at one known Asian Netspeak too. But, we’ll have to see…

I also thought of using a Hofstadterian paradox such as those in his Metamagical Themas, like “This sentence is very difficult to translate into English” written in Korean, but you know, most people don’t get why that’s a paradox so the joke kind of falls flat. Anyway…

If anyone else has any good ideas for a tattoo in Korean, please post them here. (In English! I can get it translated myself, and I’m not sure how well Hangeul will display on the computers of many people reading this page.)

Hmm… maybe this is a poll topic? Hmmmmmmmm…….

Ever Have This Feeling?

Ever kind of find yourself plodding along in one direction in life because it just seemed as good as any other, and then, sudden as a car crash, or a safe dropping out of the sky, you turn your head and realize you’re just on the wrong path altogether? And realize that you’d kind of intuited it all along, and begun to wonder whether your doubts were a sign of some kind of neurosis, and then, no, you realize, you were just going through the motions? You realize because of that adrenalin from the crash, or the safe falling, maybe, you when you turn your head, you realize there’s more than one direction in life? That it’s not safe, or easy, but it’s better than just plodding along a path because the path seemed to be there, available and not too risky? And ever turn around on the path and say, No, my life is not really about this. I’d rather find the path I am supposed to be on, instead of forcing some available route to suffice… and forcing myself to let it suffice.

All of this complicates things, somewhat. But, it’s better this way, too. Because moving towards trusting your instincts and intuitions and your own wishes is a way of being more authentic, and I suppose that’s really the key to being truly alive in the present, alive to yourself and the people around you.

Right, I’ll stop before this sounds too much like a self-help blog… and before I blabber about what I’m actually talking about.

Butterflies and Wheels

I am clapping my hands and quietly cheering…

There is something a little breathtaking in a level of science-phobia that can see ‘negativizing’ disease, suffering and death, as harmful and repressive. One is reminded of Woody Allen’s retort to a character’s reproach, in ‘The Front’, that he really wanted success: ‘So what should I want, a disease?’ Does Marglin seriously think that disease, suffering and death (the death of other people, remember, as well as one’s own) would be a source of joy and pleasure if only it weren’t for the ‘scientific medical system of knowledge’? Has the postmodern left become so tone deaf that it can hear no echo of the complacent droning of landowners and priests (and colonialists, surely) about the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate?

And check this out:

Nanda is eloquent and impassioned on the way postmodernist and constructivist ideas have been adopted and used by the fundamentalist Hindu Right in India for purposes that are anything but progressive. ‘I submit that the moment the Indian left began to talk the language of cultural constructionism, it lost the battle to the Hindu nationalists.’

This interesting article is called Butterflies and Wheels , and it’s by Ophelia Benson.

Singularity Action Group

During my bored surfing I found a link for the webpage of the Singularity Action Group. They strike me as slightly unhinged, and I have severe doubts the Singularity is coming anytime soon… just as I doubt the end of the world is nigh. Still, they’re interesting enough. I think they underestimate both the risks and benefits of a Singularity.

What the heck is a Singularity? Uh… well… there are a lot of people who can explain better than me… even the previous link does a better job than me… But anyway, while the concept was first mentioned by Alvin Toffler in his book Future Shock Alan Turing in the 1940s, later on this computer scientist/SF-writer guy named Vernor Vinge wrote a paper titled What is the Singularity, which is how the notion got popularized, I believe.

Now, the notion of the Singularity is something that is comparable to one of our very basic human instincts. We usually think humans are different from animals in some way that is just naturally there. It’s a hardwired intuition about the world for human beings. And when we look for differences, one of the main ones is the prolific and continuous use of language. Another is the prolific and continuous use of manmade tools (as opposed to simple tools like twigs or rocks, which assorted other primates also sometimes use). Both of these are important, although I think it’s clear language came first.

The acquisition of language, with all of the biological changes in humans that it required and brought out, while on the human scale must have taken ages and ages, seems, as far as I know, to have happened on the geological scale at a blink of an eye. Proto-humans before language simply cannot understand humans armed with language, any more than Neanderthals could understand, say, humans communicating with computers implanted in their heads. Now, imagine the idea of, say, a goldfish trying to understand humans. Not only is understanding it beyond a goldfish, but even trying is beyond the poor thing. (This example is one of Vinge’s own, which he mentions often, like in this interview…)

The Singularity would be something like that: something that transforms the world in such a way that “people” living after it would simply be incomprehensible to people who lived before its time. In Vinge’s fictional work about the Singularity (A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, the former of which awaits reading on my bookshelf, the latter of which awaits in a box in Canada), I think there’s some kind of super-brilliant artificial intelligence that is at play. But that wouldn’t necessarily need to be what it is. In Bruce Sterling’s moving and beautiful novel Holy Fire, it’s just the development of enough tech so that people start getting anti-aging treatment and transforming themselves… and anticipating the time of endless lifespan and endless self-modification. There are all kinds of ideas about what a Singularity might be. (Here are some SF writers talking about it; and here at the hippied-out Transhumanism page you can find many links to pages about different conceptions of the Singularity).

Anyway, given the tentative nature of something like the occurence of a Singularity, I find it interesting that there’s actually a Singularity Action Group out there. Not to criticize, but I wonder how these people feel about the already-pressing problems man faces… for example, one article I read recently claimed the solution to Global Warming might be the elimination of poverty, which breeds much dirtier use of fossil fuels. It seems to me there are more pressing issues, and if we don’t get to work sorting those out, we’re going to be in even worse trouble should a Singularity hit.