Who are you?

Who are you?

 

From the June 26 “Say What?” column in Doonesbury:

“The reports of conditions for migrant children at the border should shock all of our consciences. Those created in the image of God should be treated with dignity and compassion, especially those seeking refuge from violence back home.”

-- Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention

“Who are you? Have you ever made payroll? Have you ever built an organization of any type from scratch? What gives you the authority to speak on any issue? I’m being serious. You’re nothing but an employee -- a bureaucrat.”

-- Jerry Falwell Jr., head of Liberty University, in response

 

My reply; this paraphrase of Emily Dickinson:

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Could it be you’re Nobody too?

Why then that makes the two of us!

Don’t tell the rest, they’d make a fuss.

 

How dreary to be Somebody!

How public, like a Frog

To say your name the lifelong day

To an admiring Bog!

Us, not IT

     Us, not IT

 

One of science-fiction’s predictions was the rise of a planetary information system, containing almost all of human knowledge. This dream came true, but different in a critical and revealing way. Reality was more revolutionary and democratic than our fantasies.

For science-fiction imagined this network to be a centralized Leviathan, an artificial cybernetic intelligence with a personality and an agenda of its own. You turn on the viewscreen and a big face appears, ready to answer all of your questions. This supreme AI could be benevolent, as was Multivac in Isaac Asimov’s robot stories, or a Habitat Hub in Iain Bank’s Culture series; or it could be a menace, such as Colossus (from “The Forbin Project”) or Skynet (from “Terminator”) or IT (from L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle In Time”).

We, on Earth, now have a planetary information system, but that system is not an all-wise Multivac, not a benevolent Hub, nor a tyrannical Colossus. It’s not a Personality set above us; it’s an Internet, it’s made by us, it’s ours, it’s us.

We have a Web, not a Hub. No central intelligence because no center; and perhaps no intelligence either, for the Web has a notorious reputation. The Web loves cats, pornography, hacker scams, emoticons, videos and memes; lowdown tastes, but human.

We imagined the 21^st century as Heaven or Hell, run by mysterious angels or demons; but we find upon arriving that it is Earth, run by chatty humans. 

 

With songs to hear and sights to see

a web of wonders, lightning-quick;

the world’s widest library,

just point your mouse and double click.

Three-Handed Games

          Three-Handed Games

 

 

 

          These two games involve triples of players using hand signals. The games are “Odd One Up” and “Triads”.

 

          In “Odd One Up” the three players throw a hand signal; one or two fingers. If all three players throw the same signal, then they draw. If one differs from the other two, then the odd one out wins that round.

 

          In “Triads”, the three players throw rock-paper-scissors hand signals. If they all throw the same signal, then they draw; a shared loss. If two are the same and one is different, then compare the pair versus the singleton by scissors over paper over rock over scissors; the singleton defeats the pair twice, or loses twice. And if the players throw three different signals, then they truce; a shared win.

 

          Odd One Up is a struggle for individuality. Triads tends towards a rotating truce-triple.